how to create a dotted line

Hi Pierre:

With the Shift key. Hold Shift before you begin to draw the line, and release Shift after you release the mouse when you finish. Timing is everything.

Alternatively, you can select the line and open Graphics > Object Properties > Dimensions. For a horizontal line, the height has to be 0.

~Barb

Remember that the dotted line is a paragraph, so any content below it, will simply move down when you add anything above it.

Best to show Text Symbols (View menu > Text Symbols). This will show the Text Symbols and you'll probably see something like this:

In the above example, there are two blank lines below the dotted line, before the next paragraph. When you instert a blank line above the dotten line (to move the line down), it pushes any lines that follow down as well:

You would need to remove the additional blank lines above the second paragraph to move it back up again:

This should give you this result, with Text Symbols showing:

With the Text Symbols not showing:

Another method which copes with various column width uses a frame on the reference page:

• Set up a graphic frame (named for example DottedLine). Do not forget to put also a text line above it as label (the already present frames have).
  
• Set the frame height small and the width as wide as possible (e.g. full paper width).
• Set up a paragraph format - probably with a small font size - with no space above and below, but using a frame above (or below):
  
• The thickness of the dots depends on the line thickness (in the first method the thickness depends on the font size of the pargraph).

As @K.Daube suggested, create a Paragraph Style with a tab stop as wide a the text frame:

(In this example, the text frame has a left margin of 2cm and is 16cm wide.)

When you apply the Paragraph Style, it will create a dotted line spanning the width of the text frame: