Inconsistent Indentation

[Wm . G . McGrath]

Hi,

I'm bewildered by my inability to get emacs 20.7.1 to insert white
space properly at the start of a paragraph in
paragraph-indent-text-mode with auto-fill. This is such a small
thing for a text editor to be so frustrating.

C-q TAB will sometimes insert 4 spaces, sometimes a TAB (8 spaces)
and at others 11 and even more. 

TAB will sometimes insert 4 spaces, sometimes 6, sometimes 8 and so
on.

Has anyone else experienced this? The archives don't have much. Have
I set conflicting options? Do I need to set another option?

I'm an emacs newbie and figured text modes were THE place to
start.....

        tia, 
        bill