Putting a gap in a rule below

Question

Hello,
Whenever I design a form that requires rules below (e.g. Name______________ Address______________), I frequently have a need to have a gap in the rule below. For example, I might have State_________ Zip____________ on one line, but I seem to be forced to insert a little table here in order to get that gap. There must be an easier way! If you know how to create a gap in the rule, which then starts up again a little later on the same line, I would be most grateful if you could share!
Thanks,
Trina

Answer 1

Trina,
My trick totally depends on the order InDesign draws its stuff. You cannot influence this. But I just tried it, and (of course) I was right after all:
Trina Larson wrote:
Your method sounds intriguing in certain situations, with the exception being that the tabs will be changing depending on the length of the text, which would mean constantly overriding the Paragraph Style to fix the tabs.
Well yeah, but (1) you need to do that anyway.
(2) You only need to set tab stops where each next item should start -- to get a bit of white space 'before' and 'after' text, just type in a space or en-space.
(3) You don't need to add a tab at the very end to have the rule run to the right margin. Paragraph rules run all the way by default.
(4) (uh, what was it?) Oh yeah: since this all can be set up in the Paragraph Style and Character Style, you only have to change these for a global change. For example, you might decide you want a thinner line; or you want it to move up or down a bit.
Re (1): I don't think there is a good way to do something like this without custom tab settings. (You could manually insert underscores or underlined spaces. But that's not a "good" way.)