You can set paragraph indents and tab stops by moving the icons in the document’s ruler.
To set any of these options in your document, you must make your document rich text by choosing Format > Make Rich Text. If you want to change paragraph indents, you must set the document to wrap to fit within the document margins by choosing Format > “Wrap to Page.”
Choose Format > Text > Show Ruler to make the ruler appear, and then move the icons in the ruler.
To set the left indent for the paragraph’s first line, drag the horizontal bar.
You can’t set the paragraph indents outside the page margins, which are one inch on each side.
To set the left and right indents for the paragraph, drag the downward-pointing triangles.
To create a tab stop, drag one from the tab stop palette on the right side of the ruler.
To remove a tab stop, drag it off the ruler.
To show the ruler automatically for all new documents, choose TextEdit > Preferences, click New Document, and then select “Show ruler” below Options.