Chapter 20: Specifying Character Attributes 505 Leaving Space between Characters and Lines Typographers often pay as much attention to the space between characters, words, and lines of text as they do to the appearance of the characters themselves. Their concern about space is well justi- fied. The legibility of a block of text depends as much on the space around it, called white space, as it does on the readability of the font. InDesign offers two ways to adjust the space between characters — kerning and tracking — as well one way to adjust spacing between lines: leading. Cross-Reference InDesign also provides a way to adjust the space between paragraphs; see Chapter 21. It also explains how to control the spacing between words, which is part of paragraph formatting. n Kerning Kerning is the adjustment of space between a pair of characters. Most fonts include built-in kern- ing tables that control the space between pesky character pairs, such as LA, Yo, and WA, that other- wise could appear to have a space between them even when there isn’t one. Particularly at small font sizes, it’s safe to use a font’s built-in kerning information to control the space between letter pairs; but for large font sizes, for example the front-page nameplate of a newsletter or a magazine headline, you may want to manually adjust the space between certain character pairs to achieve consistent spacing. The Kerning controls in the Character panel and Control panel provide three options for kerning letter pairs: metrics kerning, optical kerning, and manual kerning: l Metrics kerning uses a font’s built-in kerning pairs to control the space between character pairs in the highlighted text. l Optical kerning has InDesign look at each letter pair in highlighted text and add or remove space between the letters based on the shapes of the characters. l Manual kerning is adding or removing space between a specific letter pair in user- specified amounts. The kerning method you use depends on the circumstances. For example, some fonts include a large set of kerning pairs. Such fonts, especially at text font sizes (9 to 12 points) and lower, may look fine using the default metrics kerning option, which uses built-in kerning pairs. On the other hand, if the font applied to highlighted text has few or no built-in kerning pairs or if several differ- ent fonts are mixed together, the text may benefit from the optical kerning method. At display font sizes (36 points and larger), you may want to manually kern individual letter pairs to suit your taste. 30_607169-ch20.indd 50530_607169-ch20.indd 505 4/22/10 7:59 PM4/22/10 7:59 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Part V: Text Fundamentals 506 When the flashing text cursor is between a pair of characters, the Kerning field displays the pair’s kerning value. If metrics or optical kerning is applied, the kerning value is shown in parentheses. To apply metrics or optical kerning to highlighted text, choose the appropriate option from the Kerning popup menu. To apply manual kerning, click between a pair of letters and then type a value in the Kerning field or choose one of the predefined values. Negative values tighten; positive values loosen. Note InDesign applies kerning (and tracking) to highlighted text in 1 ⁄ 1,000 -em increments called units. An em is as wide as the height of the current font size (that is, an em for 12-point text is 12 points wide), which means that kern- ing and tracking increments are relative to the applied font size. n You can also use a keyboard shortcut to apply manual kerning. Press Option+← or Alt+← to decrease the kerning value in increments of 20 units. Press Option+→ or Alt+→ to increase the kerning value in increments of 20 units. If you add the Ô or Ctrl keys to these keyboard shortcuts, the increment is increased to 100 units. If you use the up and down cursor keys in the Kerning field in the Character panel or Control panel, you change the kerning in increments of 10; while pressing and holding Shift, the increments increase to 25. Caution A warning about kerning and tracking: InDesign happily lets you tighten or loosen text to the point of illegibil- ity. If this is the effect you’re after, go for it. However, as a general rule, when letter shapes start to collide, you’ve tightened too far. n Tracking Tracking is similar to kerning but applies to a range of highlighted text. Tracking is the process of adding or removing space among all letters in a range of text. You might use tracking to tighten character spacing for a font that you think is too spacey, or loosen spacing for a font that’s too tight. You could also track a paragraph tighter or looser to eliminate a short last line or a widow (the last line of a paragraph that falls at the top of a page or column). To apply tracking to highlighted text, type a value in the Character panel’s Tracking field or choose one of the predefined values. Negative values tighten; positive values loosen (in 0.001-em incre- ments). Use the same keyboard techniques as for kerning. Leading InDesign’s leading (rhymes with sledding, not with heeding) feature lets you control the vertical space between lines of type. In the days of metal type, typesetters would insert thin strips of metal — spe- cifically, lead — between rows of letters to aid legibility. In the world of digital typography, leading refers to the vertical space between lines of type as measured from baseline to baseline. 30_607169-ch20.indd 50630_607169-ch20.indd 506 4/22/10 7:59 PM4/22/10 7:59 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Chapter 20: Specifying Character Attributes 507 In the publishing world, leading is traditionally an attribute of paragraphs, but InDesign takes a nonstandard, character-oriented approach. This means that you can apply different leading values within a single paragraph. InDesign looks separately at each line of text in a paragraph and uses the largest applied leading value within a line to determine the leading for that line. That capability might have some utility in some cases, but for most publishers, the results are unevenly spaced lines that look unacceptably amateurish. Fortunately, you can make InDesign work the way the rest of the world does and apply consistent leading to entire paragraphs (using the largest leading value applied if several have been applied in a paragraph): Select the Apply Leading to Entire Paragraphs option in the Type pane of the Preferences dialog box (choose InDesign ➪ Preferences ➪ Type or press Ô+K on the Mac, or choose Edit ➪ Preferences ➪ Type or press Ctrl+K in Windows). By default, InDesign applies Auto Leading to text. When Auto Leading is applied, leading is equal to 120 percent of the font size. For example, if Auto Leading is applied to 10-point text, the lead- ing value is 12 points; for 12-point text, Auto Leading is 14.4 points; and so on. As long as you don’t change fonts or font sizes in a paragraph, Auto Leading works pretty well. If you do change fonts or sizes, Auto Leading can result in inconsistent spacing between lines. For this reason, it’s safer to specify an actual leading value. Generally, it’s a good idea to use a leading value slightly larger than the font size, which is why Auto Leading works in many cases. When the leading value equals the font size, text is said to be set solid. That’s about as tight as you ever want to set leading unless you’re trying to achieve a spe- cial typographic effect or working with very large text sizes in ad copy headlines. As is the case with kerning and tracking, when tight leading causes letters to collide — ascenders and descenders are the first to overlap — you’ve gone too far. In many ways, InDesign makes once-mystical typographic processes easy to use by designers, honoring the rules and intricacies of typography historically known only to typographers. When it comes to auto leading, however, InDesign has gone off in a mysterious direction. For example, why is something that InDesign treats as a character format setting accessed through the Paragraph panel? (Easy answer: Leading should be a paragraph attribute in the first place, and whoever put the Leading control in the Character panel missed the Auto Leading control!) A harder mystery: Why is the Auto Leading control offered as part of the justification controls, for which it has no relation- ship? (Maybe that’s how it got missed when Leading was put in the Character panel!) Another mystery is why you cannot specify Auto Leading amounts in anything other than percentages. This causes many QuarkXPress documents imported into InDesign to flow incorrectly because QuarkXPress lets you set the Auto Leading to a specific value, such as +2 (which adds 2 points to the text size rather than use a percentage such as 120 percent that results in awkward leading amounts such as 14.4 points). Being able to specify a specific additive value such as +2 makes sense for many kinds of layouts, so the inability to specify such values is an unfortunate, continued omission in InDesign. Auto Leading Mysteries 30_607169-ch20.indd 50730_607169-ch20.indd 507 4/22/10 7:59 PM4/22/10 7:59 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Part V: Text Fundamentals 508 You can change InDesign’s preset Auto Leading value of 120 percent. To do so, choose Type ➪ Paragraph or press Option+Ô+T or Ctrl+Alt+T to display the Paragraph panel. Choose Justification in the flyout menu, type a new value in the Auto Leading field, and then click OK. To modify the leading value applied to selected text, choose one of the predefined options from the Leading popup menu in the Character panel or Control panel, or type a leading value in the field. You can type values from 0 to 5,000 points in 0.001-point increments. You can also use the up and down cursor keys to change leading in 1-point increments. Summary As a user of InDesign, modifying the appearance of type is one of the more common tasks you’ll perform. InDesign lets you modify the appearance of highlighted characters or selected paragraphs. When text is highlighted, you can use the controls in the Character panel or Control panel to change any of several character attributes: font family, font size, font style, leading, kerning, track- ing, vertical and horizontal scale, baseline shift, and skew. You can also set the hyphenation and spell-checking language, apply all caps or small caps, superscripts or subscripts, underline, strike- through, ligatures, and OpenType variations. You also set line spacing (leading) as a character attribute, something normally applied to entire paragraphs in other programs. Setting it as a character attribute can lead to uneven line spacing, something that, fortunately, InDesign lets you override to get consistent leading throughout a paragraph. 30_607169-ch20.indd 50830_607169-ch20.indd 508 4/22/10 7:59 PM4/22/10 7:59 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. 509 CHAPTER Specifying Paragraph Attributes IN THIS CHAPTER Understanding paragraph fundamentals Working with paragraph and nested styles Changing margins, indentation, spacing, and column spanning Applying initial caps, inline graphics, and automatic bullets and numbering Working with hyphenation and justification Modifying other paragraph formats A s is an individual character, a paragraph in InDesign is treated like a basic typographic unit. When you create a new text frame and begin typing, you create a paragraph each time you press Return or Enter. A paragraph can be as short as one character or word on a single line or many words strung out over many lines. When you press Return or Enter, the paragraph formats of the preceding paragraph are automatically used for the subsequent paragraph (unless you create styles that automatically change paragraph formats). In general, paragraph formats control how the lines of text in the paragraph are constructed. Changing paragraph formats doesn’t change the appearance of the individual characters within the paragraph. To do that, you must highlight the characters and modify character-level formats. Cross-Reference This chapter focuses on applying paragraph-level typographic formats; Chapter 20 focuses on applying character-level formats. n Working with Paragraph Formats To select a paragraph, simply click within it using the Type tool. Any change you make to a paragraph-level format applies to all the lines in the para- graph. (In contrast to how you modify character-level formats, you don’t have to highlight all the text in a paragraph to modify a paragraph-level for- mat.) If you need to change the paragraph formats of several consecutive paragraphs, you can highlight all the text in all the paragraphs, or you can 31_607169-ch21.indd 50931_607169-ch21.indd 509 4/22/10 8:00 PM4/22/10 8:00 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Part V: Text Fundamentals 510 click anywhere in the first paragraph, drag anywhere within the last paragraph, and then release the mouse button. Just as you can’t apply two different colors to a single character, so you can’t apply conflicting paragraph formats within a single paragraph. For example, you can’t specify that one line in a para- graph be left-aligned and the rest right-aligned. All lines in a paragraph must share the same align- ment, indents, tab settings, and all other paragraph-level formats. As is the case with character formats, you apply paragraph formats in two ways: l Use the controls in the Paragraph panel or Control panel’s Paragraph (¶) pane, shown in Figures 21.1, or their keyboard shortcuts. l Create and apply paragraph styles. A paragraph style is essentially a text-formatting macro that lets you apply multiple paragraph and character formats to selected paragraphs in a single operation. If you’re working on a multipage publication such as a book, newspaper, magazine, or catalog that repeatedly uses the same basic text formats, you definitely want to use paragraph styles to handle the bulk of your formatting chores; but even if you use styles, you will probably also use the Paragraph panel to do some man- ual paragraph formatting. Cross-Reference Tab settings are also a paragraph-level format. See Chapter 25 for a detailed explanation of InDesign’s tabs feature. n Setting paragraph attributes There are three ways to open the Paragraph panel: Choose Type ➪ Paragraph, choose Window ➪ Type & Tables ➪ Paragraph, or press Option+Ô+T or Ctrl+Alt+T. The Paragraph panel can have two appearances: If you choose Hide Options from the popup menu, the Space Before, Space After, Drop Cap Number of Lines, Drop Cap One or More Characters, Hyphenate, Align to Baseline Grid, and Do Not Align to Baseline Grid controls are not shown. You can use the double-arrow iconic button to the left of the panel name to toggle among showing the panel title, the basic options, and all options. You can also use the Control panel’s paragraph formatting options, shown in Figure 21.1. (Be sure to click the ¶ iconic button to get the paragraph options.) These controls mirror those in the Paragraph panel, and using them instead of the Paragraph panel can reduce screen clutter. If the Control panel is not visible (it almost always is), display it by choosing Window ➪ Control or pressing Option+Ô+6 or Ctrl+Alt+6. In both the Paragraph panel and the Control panel, several of the options have keyboard shortcuts. 31_607169-ch21.indd 51031_607169-ch21.indd 510 4/22/10 8:00 PM4/22/10 8:00 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Chapter 21: Specifying Paragraph Attributes 511 FIGURE 21.1 Top: The Paragraph panel and its flyout menu. Bottom: The Control panel’s Paragraph (¶) pane and flyout menu. Align buttons Justify buttons Align to/from Spine buttons Right Indent Space After Last Line Right Indent Drop Cap One or More Characters Left Indent First Line Left Indent Space Before Drop Cap Number of Lines Align Baseline Grid to Buttons Character Formatting Controls (Character pane) Align buttons Left Indent Right Indent Space Before Space After Bulleted List Paragraph Styles flyout menu Paragraph Styles Do Not Align to Baseline Grid Number of Columns Span Columns Paragraph Formatting Controls (Paragraph pane) Justify buttons Align to/from Spine buttons First Line Left Indent Last Line Left Indent Drop Cap Number of Lines Drop Cap One or More Characters Numbered List Clear Overrides Align to Baseline Grid Gutter Horizontal Cursor Position Quick Apply 31_607169-ch21.indd 51131_607169-ch21.indd 511 4/22/10 8:00 PM4/22/10 8:00 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Part V: Text Fundamentals 512 Tip If the Type tool is selected and no objects are active, any changes you make in the Control panel’s Paragraph (¶) pane become the default settings for the document and are automatically used when you create new text frames. n Working with paragraph styles To work with paragraph styles, use the Paragraph Styles panel, which you open by choosing Type ➪ Paragraph Styles or pressing Ô+F11 or Ctrl+ F11. (You can also choose Window ➪ Styles ➪ Paragraph Styles.) A paragraph style can set any or all of the attributes in the Paragraph panel and its flyout menu. A paragraph style can also set character-level formatting such as font, language, case, and so on (see Chapter 20). That means you can use one style (the paragraph style) to set all formatting attributes for text in a paragraph. And you would use character styles just for applying character formatting to text selections within paragraphs, such as for highlighting new terms or indicating hyperlinks. Note Your layout’s Paragraph Styles panel includes any character styles imported from Word or RTF files. Chapter 17 explains how to control style import when importing text files. n Cross-Reference For details about creating, modifying, applying, and managing styles, see Chapter 7. For details on Grep styles, see Chapter 26. n Paragraph styles work like other styles, with these exceptions: l If your selected paragraphs have more than one paragraph style applied within the group, the Paragraph Styles panel displays the text (Mixed) at the lower left. l When you delete a paragraph style that is applied to text in your document and select [No Paragraph Style] as the replacement style, you have the option to select the Preserve Formatting option to convert the unapplied style’s formatting to local formatting, or to deselect it to make the text lose that formatting as well as its style. Three options in the Control panel’s Paragraph (¶) pane are unrelated to paragraph formatting: The Number of Columns and Gutter fields affect text frames and have the same effects as the same- named controls in the Text Frame Options dialog box, as described in Chapter 18. The Horizontal Cursor Position status indicator shows the horizontal position, relative to the frame’s left inset, of the text cursor. This indicator can be helpful when you’re trying to measure where to draw vertical rules, set tab stops, or otherwise understand where specific text sits within a line so that you can align or place something at the same horizontal location. The Paragraph Pane’s Guest Functions 31_607169-ch21.indd 51231_607169-ch21.indd 512 4/22/10 8:00 PM4/22/10 8:00 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Chapter 21: Specifying Paragraph Attributes 513 l The Convert "current style name" Bullets and Numbering to Text option in the Paragraph Styles panel’s flyout menu removes any automatic bullets or numbering defined through InDesign’s bulleted and numbered lists feature from selected paragraphs (see Chapter 22). The paragraphs that this option is applied to still have bullets and numbers, but they are no longer updated if the style is changed or if paragraphs are added or deleted. (Adding paragraphs would normally add bullets or adjust numbering.) l InDesign has a neat capability that lets you apply multiple styles to selected text. First, define the various styles, and be sure that each style has a different style selected in the Next Style pop-up menu in the Paragraph Style Options or New Paragraph Style dialog boxes. For example, if you have Headline, Byline, and Body Copy styles, make sure that Headline has Byline selected in Next Style and that Byline has Body Copy selected in Next Style. Then highlight all the text that uses this sequence of styles. Now Control+click or right-click Headline and select Apply “Headline” + Next Style from the contextual menu. InDesign applies Headline to the first paragraph, Byline to the second paragraph, and Body Copy to the rest. New Feature The default font in the [Basic Paragraph] paragraph style has changed in InDesign CS5: It is now Minion Pro Regular, which InDesign installs for you. Previously, [Basic Paragraph] used Times on the Mac and Times New Roman in Windows as its font. n Working with nested styles Often, you’ll want to apply character formatting in a consistent manner within paragraphs. For example, you may want to change the font for the first character in a bulleted list so that the cor- rect symbol appears for the bullet. Or you might want to italicize the numerals in a numbered list. Or you might want the first four words of body text that appear after a headline to be boldface and in small caps. Or you might want the first sentence in instructional paragraphs to be italic. InDesign lets you automate such formatting through the nested styles feature. As with all paragraph formatting, you can use this feature via the Paragraph panel for specific para- graphs or via the Paragraph Styles panel for all paragraphs using a specific style. Note InDesign has a second form of nested style, called nested line styles, which works just the same as other nested styles (explained next) except that it lets you apply a character style to a certain number of lines in a para- graph. This is a popular design approach, such as having the first line in small caps. You specify the desired character style and how many lines you want it applied to, and InDesign does the rest. n Figure 21.2 shows an example of nested styles in use, along with the Paragraph Style Options dia- log box’s Drop Caps and Nested Styles pane in which you create them. Here, you can see that the first sentence of the introductory paragraph’s text is set to appear in red. 31_607169-ch21.indd 51331_607169-ch21.indd 513 4/22/10 8:00 PM4/22/10 8:00 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Part V: Text Fundamentals 514 FIGURE 21.2 You can use a nested style to set the first line (for example) to use a specific character style. Essentially, you create a set of rules as to how much text gets a specific character style applied using the scope options, shown in the pop-up menu, for a nested style to determine what text receives the specified formatting, such as two sentences or all words until an em space. A nested line style does the same for lines of text. Note The Nested Styles feature is included in the same dialog box as the Drop Caps feature. That’s because a drop cap would be the first nested style in a paragraph and can never be anything but the first style. By combining the two into one dialog box, InDesign lets you treat a drop cap as part of a series of styles to be applied to a paragraph. If you want only a drop cap, you simply don’t create a nested style. n Here’s how the nested styles work: 1. Define any character styles that you’ll apply to text through a nested style. Even if all you’re doing is making text italic, you need to define a character style to do so. The nested styles feature cannot apply any attributes other than those available in a character style. 2. Open the Paragraph Styles panel (choose Type ➪ Paragraph Styles or press Ô+F11 or Ctrl+F11), choose Style Options from the flyout menu to open the Paragraph Style Options dialog box, and go to the Drop Caps and Nested Styles pane. 31_607169-ch21.indd 51431_607169-ch21.indd 514 4/22/10 8:00 PM4/22/10 8:00 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. [...]... InDesign CS5 Before, you had to place the multicolumn-spanning headlines in separate text frames n Controlling Paragraph Spacing InDesign lets you adjust spacing for paragraphs in two ways — between lines of text and between paragraphs — and it provides three mechanisms for doing so Using leading Leading (rhymes with sledding, not heeding), or the space between lines in a paragraph, is treated by InDesign. .. than a line’s width of text and apply No Break, InDesign may not display the rest of the story’s text Tip If you place a discretionary hyphen in a word, InDesign breaks the word only at that point (or does not break it at all) However, you can place multiple discretionary hyphens within a single word; InDesign uses the one that produces the best results n InDesign uses discretionary hyphens only if you... This is particularly handy for multicolumn text frames InDesign aligns a paragraph to its text frame’s baseline grid if it has one and to the document’s baseline grid if not — assuming, of course, that the Align to Baseline Grid option is selected Cross-Reference Chapter 10 covers how to set up baseline grids in more detail n Although you can use InDesign s Lock to Baseline Grid feature to align text... paragraphs, whether to hyphenate is a personal choice InDesign offers two hyphenation methods: manual and automatic Manual hyphenation If you want to break a particular word differently from the way InDesign would normally break the word, you can place a discretionary hyphen in the word If the word falls at the end of a line in a hyphenated paragraph, InDesign uses the discretionary hyphen to split the... text to the baseline grid Every document includes a grid of horizontal lines, called the baseline grid, which can be shown or hidden (choose View ➪ Grids & Guides ➪ Show/Hide Baseline Grid or press Option+Ô+' or Ctrl+Alt+') and used to help position objects and text baselines A document’s baseline grid is established in the Grids pane of the Preferences dialog box (choose InDesign ➪ Preferences ➪ Grids... box and return to your document Justification controls InDesign provides three options for controlling how justification is achieved: l Condense or expand the width of spaces, or spacebands, between words l Add or remove space between letters l Condense or expand the width of characters, or glyphs The options in the Justification dialog box let you specify the degree to which InDesign adjusts normal... Click OK when you’re done Tip If you don’t have a character style ready to use for your drop cap, nested style, or nested line style, InDesign lets you create it by choosing New Character Style in each of the Character Style popup menus n 515 Part V: Text Fundamentals Note InDesign provides a special character that forces a nested style to stop being applied Called End Nested Style Here, you insert this... won’t be confused — typically in brief copy like ads and pull-quotes l Align Towards Spine: This is similar to Left Justify or Right Justify except that InDesign automatically chooses a left or right alignment based on where the spine is in a facingpages document Essentially, this automatically creates right-aligned text on left-hand pages and left-aligned text on right-hand pages l Align Away from Spine:... but InDesign also supports several variations of this technique Applying basic drop caps A drop cap is created by notching a paragraph’s first letter or letters into the upper-left corner of the paragraph Drop caps are often used to embellish the first paragraph of a story, to draw attention to paragraphs, and to interrupt the grayness in columns of text In the Paragraph panel or Control panel, InDesign. .. Ô+V or Ctrl+V The graphic is now anchored to the text, and you can apply InDesign s Drop Cap settings to it as if it were text Similarly, you can resize it to create a raised cap from it (Chapter 13 covers anchoring in more detail.) In addition to importing graphics for use as initial caps, you can create your own graphics in InDesign For example, you can place the initial cap character in its own . the [Basic Paragraph] paragraph style has changed in InDesign CS5: It is now Minion Pro Regular, which InDesign installs for you. Previously, [Basic Paragraph]. are new to InDesign CS5. Before, you had to place the multicolumn-spanning headlines in separate text frames. n Controlling Paragraph Spacing InDesign lets