Text variable + text with tabs to align away from spine

Question

Hello
I need a document header that shows the chapter captions. So I created a text variable that picks the format of the caption.
But the chapter captions have tabs:
I.>Introduction
So in the header, on the left pages it looks fine:
alignment is "away from spine"
I.>Introduction
But on the right page the chapter number remains with the spine, only the text after the tabs aligns "away from the spine":
I.                 >                                   Introduction
I found it difficult to search for this on google and the forum (and no result) - and hope I made it clear in the text above I can't believe it's a rare problem and really hope I just oversee something and it can be solved..
Thank you!!

Answer 1

Some details about how the paragraph is constructed would help. I'm guessing here that the variable is a running head variable based on paragraph style, and that the nmber is manually typed, along with the tab, rather than being a numbered list.
If that's the case, substituting one or more em spaces or other fixed-width spaces in combination for the tab should solve the problem in the headers, but may cause other issues in the body of the text if your intention by using the tab was to always have a variable space between the number and the words depening on how many characters there are in your number. With roman numerals and proportional fonts it would be difficult without the tab to always have the chapter title itself begin at the same x-coordinate in the frame regardless of the number.
To overcome that issue, you can use two variables in the header, both designated as Running Header (character style), and separate them with an em-space or similar (not a tab). If there are not already nested styles in use for the titles, create two character styles that are nothing but names, then in the paragraph style for your chapter titles go to Drop Caps and Nested Styles and apply the first character syle up to 1 tab character, None through 1 tab character, and the second character style through 1 sentence. You two character style based variables in the header will pick up the two parts of the paragraph. It seems unlikely that anyone would notice or care that the spacing is fixed between number and text in the headers but not on the page, especially since the alignment shifts from page to page.