February 6th, 2018 by Sean

Make Precise Annotations Using the Ruler

Ruler tool

Does your lack of a stylus make drawing straight lines your enemy? Your days of dragging a shaking finger across your screen hoping to be as accurate as possible are over!  Explain Everything offers a ruler that makes drawing precise and perfectly straight lines easy, with a stylus or without.  Clean up your annotations and deliver precise highlights on documents every time.

This week’s Tuesday Tip will show you how to use the ruler to draw clean straight lines.

What you’ll need

  • Explain Everything
  • An inserted text document

Step 1

With your document on your canvas, tap the Draw tool. With the Draw tool menu open, tap Style and Options. Now, tap the Ruler. This inserts the ruler onto your canvas.

Ruler Draw Tool

Step 2

Position the ruler above the line you want to highlight. Make sure it is positioned in the middle of the text, not below it. Then tap the Highlighter tool. Choose your favorite highlighting color and drag your finger over the text you want to highlight. The line sticks to the ruler creating a beautiful clean highlight.

Highlight perfectly


Pro Tips

  1. The ruler will be visible with either the Draw tool or Highlighter selected and can be moved with one finger.
  2. Need to draw a line at a different angle? Use two fingers to adjust the angle of the ruler!
  3. Want to create a precise new shape? Import an image of the shape and use the ruler to trace the shape!

Step 3

Before moving the document with your annotations, select the Inspector. Tap your document and make sure that your annotations are all grouped with your inserted document. If they are not, simply tap the annotations that aren’t grouped, and then in the Inspector’s Edit menu, tap Group. Now you can move the document and annotations freely.

To turn the ruler off, simply tap the Ruler icon in the Style and Options menu again.

Group Annotations


Now you can annotate with ease without worrying about how straight your lines are!

Happy Explaining!

Do you use Explain Everything in an interesting way or would like to see something explored in depth? Contact us at connect@explaineverything.com with your suggestions!