Tab stop
![Text between tabs is shown as different coloured blocks. The animation shows elastic tabstops, which keep several lines of text aligned when one line is edited.](/Images/godic/202502/14/Elastictabstops_animation3651.gif")
A tab stop on a typewriter is a location where the carriage movement is halted by mechanical gears. Tab stops are set manually, and pressing the tab key causes the carriage to go to the next tab stop. In text editors on a computer, the same concept is implemented simplistically with automatic, fixed tab stops.