Styling Tab Leaders In InDesign CS2

Sometimes, when cre­at­ing tab lead­ers, you’ll want a sym­bol size that’s dif­fer­ent from the type size that you have in the rest of the list you’re cre­at­ing. You can do this by styling each line of tab lead­ers one by one, but that could become tedious. 

A lev­el of automa­tion is achiev­able by using nest­ed styles. Create your list, putting each menu/TOC item on a sep­a­rate para­graph (sep­a­rate them with hard-returns, not forced line breaks). Set your tab spec and tab leader as need­ed, then cre­ate this as a Paragraph Style. Next, open this style for edit­ing, and style the tab lead­ers as appro­pri­ate, with an eye toward adjust­ing lead­ing if the point size is increased, and cre­ate a Character style from the styled tab leader. Now, edit the Paragraph Style, using the Character Style as a Nested Style.