A method for text editing includes drawing a staircase object which is recognized by the software and replaced by a machine rendered staircase object. The user places alphanumeric characters adjacent to each step of the staircase object, the font, case, style, color and punctuation indicating the format of the heading of each step. An arrow is drawn from the staircase object to a text object to apply the heading formats. Margins may be set by drawing vertical arrows to the top of a text object, causing a horizontal margin line to be rendered spanning the top of the text object. The arrows may be dragged horizontally to change the margins of any selected text.