Tips & Tricks for Creative Professionals and Technical Writers using the Adobe Creative Suite & the Adobe Technical Communications Suite

By Barb Binder

One day, a prospective student called me to discuss the merits of an InDesign/InCopy workflow vs a FrameMaker/Acrobat Mark-up workflow. As a long-time trainer on all four products, he came to the right place…to be convinced to use FrameMaker and Acrobat, or so I thought as the demo began. Two hours later, it all boiled down to being able to highlight text, which neither FrameMaker nor InDesign supports. Acrobat does, but he wanted the highlighting in the source file.

There’s no text highlighting button in InDesign but you can make it happen using underlines. Who knew?

1. If highlighting is the goal, start out by underlining some sample text.
   
   
2. Go back and reselect the underlined text and hold the Alt/Opt key as you click on the Underline button again. In my example, I’m using Adobe Garamond Pro 11/15 so I set the underline specs as follows:
   
3. Pick OK and there you go.
   
4. If you like, you could round the ends use the Rounded End Cap created in the post: Adobe InDesign: Creating New Stroke Styles.
   
5. And definitely save the highlighted text as a Character Style, so that you have one click access to it in the future.
   
6. Makes for very quick and easy highlighting.
   

By Barb Binder

Note: If you are new to the Stroke Panel, take a moment to review the basic concepts covered in Adobe InDesign: Stroke Primer before moving on to this tutorial.

A very useful, yet little known, option in the Stroke panel is the ability to add your own custom styles to the Stroke Type list. It’s a pretty easy process and we are going to start by adding one style that is conspicuously missing from the default list: a stroke with rounded end caps. Here’s how:

1. Open the Stroke panel (Window > Stroke)
2. Click the Stroke panel menu and choose Stroke Styles.
   
3. Click the New button to add a new style.
   
4. Let’s call it “Rounded End Cap” and then set the stroke length to match the pattern length (in my example, it’s 2p0) and chose the rounded end Cap, before clicking both Add and Done, OK.
   
5. Pull down the Stroke Type menu in the Stroke panel or the Control panel, and there’s your new stroke. It may not seem very exciting yet, but this new stoke is going to play pivotal role in both our custom underline and custom paragraph rules tutorial.
   

Before we wrap up, let’s add a few more stroke styles, just for fun. These last six styles are InDesign “Easter Eggs”. (Easter Eggs are undocumented features added to software programs by mischievous programmers.) While these may not be particularly practical, they are certain to put a smile on your face.

1. Open the Stroke panel (Window > Stroke)
2. Click the Stroke panel menu and choose Stroke Styles.
3. Click the New button to add a new style.
4. These first four require that you set the Type to Dash, and then type in the following four Stroke names, clicking the Add button after each one: Feet, Happy, Lights and Woof.
   
5. Click Done to see the new Stroke styles:
   
6. Add two new additional styles by clicking on the New button again. These last two must be based on the Stripe style. Call one Rasta, and the other one Rainbow, clicking the Add button after each one.
   
7. Click the Done button to see the new styles:
   
8. Now, go play!
   

By Barb Binder

When most of us think of spaces, we think of hitting the spacebar, and moving on. Did you know that InDesign supports additional spaces? Ok, lots of them? Sometimes I have to suppress a giggle when I direct my Introduction to Adobe InDesign students to the Insert White Space options—somebody will always gasp when they see the long list! Have you seen it yet? Open up the Type menu and pick Insert White Space:

Before we cover all of those options, how about if we just discuss the spacebar for a moment? The spacebar is used to separate the words within a sentence. Spacebar spaces are proportional, and can expand and contract as type is set to full justification (that’s how InDesign gets each line to start at the right margin and end at the left margin). Contrary to what you were taught, good design calls for one (just one!) space between sentences and after punctuation. If this is news to you, please go read Adobe InDesign: Removing Unwanted Spaces, Fast!

Meanwhile, back to the list. Most of these are fixed width spaces, that do not expand or contract their width when a paragraph is justified. In the first group, their width is based on an em space.

• Em space. The em space is typically the width of a capital letter M in any given typeface. In InDesign, if your type is set to 12 points, the em space is 12 points wide. I use them when I want a big fat space and I don’t feel like setting a tab. In the first image below, the run-in head is separated by a spacebar space. In the second image, it’s an em space, which is significantly wider and will always have the same width:
  
  
• En space. Half the width of an en space. For example, 12 point type has a 6 point en space. I use them when I want a fixed space and I don’t feel like setting a tab. In the image below, the run-in head is separated by an en space.
  
• Thin space. One‑eighth the width of an em space. For 12 point type, that’s about 1.9 points My personal preference is to space out my em dashes with thin spaces on both sides. The first image below shows em dashes without any spacing around them, the second image shows thin spaces on either side.
  
  
• Third space. One‑third the width of an em space.
• Quarter space. One‑fourth the width of an em space.
• Sixth space. One‑sixth the width of an em space.
• Hair space. One‑twenty‑fourth the width of an em space.

The next two can be useful in tables, especially when you don’t want to have to set tab stops to line up the columns:

• Punctuation space. Same width as an exclamation point, period, or colon in the typeface.
• Figure space. Same width as a number in the typeface. This one is really handy for scooting the numbers in a table over so that the varying columns line up on the right hand side, when I don’t feel like setting a tab. In both images, the cells all have center alignment. In the first image, the first two cells have few digits than the rest, and the center alignment is apparent. In the second image, I inserted a figure space at the beginning of the first two cells, and everything lines up perfectly.
  
  

The next two are non-breaking spaces. They both keep two words together on a line, so for better word spacing, I’d advise you to use the newer, proportional non-breaking space for normal paragraphs:

• Nonbreaking space. The same proportionable width as pressing the spacebar, but keeps two words together on the same line. In the first image, the number 6 is all alone on the last line. In the second image, a non-breaking space was added between May and the number 6, so now they both move to the next line together.
  
• Fixed Width Nonbreaking space. A fixed width space also prevents the line from being broken at the space character, but does not expand or compress in justified text.

Saving the best for last, the flush space is the coolest cat in the spacing crowd:

• Flush space. Adds a variable amount of space to the last line of a fully justified paragraph. Take a look at the loosely spaced words in the first image below. This is InDesign’s best effort to achieve full justification on every line. Now take a look at the second image, the spacebar space preceding the ornament was removed, and replaced with a flush space. This allows InDesign to alot all the extra space to the last line, resulting in significantly better spacing on the entire paragraph.
  
  

By Barb Binder

GREP (General Regular Expression Print) made its first appearance in Adobe InDesign CS3 as a major upgrade to the Find/Change dialog box. By using GREP searches, we could search for patterns instead of literal text/numeric strings. Document clean-up took a giant step forward with this addition. (For more information on GREP Find/Change, visit “Adobe InDesign: Removing Unwanted Spaces, Fast!” and “Adobe InDesign: GREP to Replace Hyphens with En Dashes”. )

In Adobe InDesign CS4, GREP Styles made a fairly quiet appearance. In my observation, they were ignored by most InDesign users, most likely because they didn’t appreciate the power that was suddenly at their fingertips. Instead of a Find/Change update that you have to initiate, these GREP Styles work automatically, as you enter and edit text.

I’m going to use the example of Old Style figures to illustrate the point. If you aren’t familiar with the term, please study the illustration below. Both sets of numbers are set in Garamond Premier Pro 23/27, but the figures on the left are “Lining figures”, a modern style of numerals where all figures are of the same height and rest on the baseline. The “Old Style” figures on the right vary in height and position, and can have either ascenders or descenders. If you decide you want to use the Old Style in place of the default lining style, you’ll have a little work ahead of you. (But if you read this whole article, it’s really just a little work.)

One more note, make sure you choose an OpenType font for this tutorial. You get a bunch of them with your Creative Suite installation. for example, Adobe Garamond Pro, Adobe Caslon Pro, Minion Pro and Myriad Pro will all work.

Technique Number 1: Find/Change with GREP

1. Open up a document with lining figures:
   
2. Choose Edit > Find/Change. Begin by clicking on the GREP tab, and then search for \d, which means any digit. Finally, click the Specify Attributes to Change button.
3. In the Change Format Settings dialog box, pick the OpenType Features from the category list on the left, and change the Figure Style to Proportional Oldstyle. Click OK.
4. Set the Search range (i.e., document, story, selection) and Change All.
5. Click OK and admire the Old Style figures:
   
6. It’s great, but if you add any more numbers, you’ll have to run the search again (and again and again):
   

Technique Number 2: GREP Style

1. Let’s start over again, and try the same thing with a GREP Style:
   
2. This time, select the text and create a new Paragraph Style. Choose Window > Type & Tables > Paragraph Styles. Hold the Alt/Opt key as you click the Create New Style button:
3. Give your style a descriptive name (I called mine “Address”). Click on Apply Style to Selection and Preview before clicking on GREP Style in the category list on the left.
4. Click the “New GREP Style” button:
5. Notice that the new style already conveniently shows \d+, which means apply to one or more digits. That works.
6. Now we need to apply a Character Style to change all the numbers to Old Style, but we forgot to create it in advance. No worries, just click the word [None] after the words Apply Style, and click on the create New Character Style option:
7. Give the new Character Style a descriptive name (I used “Old Style Figures”), and click the OpenType category from the list on the left. Change the Figure Style to Proportional Oldstyle and click OK until you are back to your document.
8. Not only is your existing text using Old Style figures, try adding some more text. WOW! All numbers within the Address paragraph format will automatically shift to Old Style, with no additional work on your part. Now that’s a timesaver.

By Barb Binder

Students come to my page layout classes (FrameMaker & InDesign) and often ask how they can easily line up baselines across columns, and easily force the last lines of every column to line up with the bottom margin. The word easily is often a clue to their pain: it always means they are adding and subtracting leading and paragraph spacing values to achieve their goals. Might be OK if there aren’t going to be any further edits, but if there are, it becomes a total nightmare.

We have three techniques in FrameMaker to automatically align text in the columns of a multi-column layout so that text has an even appearance:

1. Balancing text across columns. FrameMaker distributes text evenly across the columns of a text frame that isn’t full of text such as the last page of a chapter.
2. Feathering text to the bottom of text frames. Also known as vertical justification, which means that the last line of text in each column reaches the bottom of the column.
3. Synchronizing baselines across columns. The first lines of body paragraphs line up whenever they appear side by side in columns.

Balancing text across columns. The first one is the easiest: in a multi-column layout, just place your cursor in Flow A (or the main text flow) and chose Format > Page Layout > Column Layout. Select Balance Columns and click Update Entire Flow. The results are most evident on the final page of the flow: instead of having one long and one short (or empty) column, you will end up with columns that end at the same place.

Before and after example:

Feathering text to the bottom of text frames. To force all columns to end even with the bottom margin on each page, you can turn on feathering. You specify the maximum amount of space to be added between paragraphs (Interline Padding) and within paragraphs (Inter-Pgf Padding). The space is added first between the paragraphs, and if that doesn’t do the trick, it will add the space within the paragraphs.

1. If a document window is active, place the insertion point in the main text flow.
2. Choose Format > Page Layout > Line Layout.
3. Select Feather, and enter the maximum amount of space FrameMaker can add between lines (Interline Padding) and between paragraphs (Inter-Pgf Padding). FrameMaker won’t exceed the padding limits you set. I’m using the fairly conservative default values of inter-line padding of 2 pts, and maximum inter-paragraph padding of 6 pts.
   
4. Click Update Flow.

Before and after example:

If it’s not possible to feather text in a column without exceeding the limits, FrameMaker does not even try to feather text in that column, which is great for the last page in the flow that most likely should end short.

If you’d like to learn about the third option of aligning text across columns in FrameMaker, continue on to Adobe FrameMaker: Aligning Text Across Columns, Part II of II.