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

by Barb Binder

I love almost everything about Adobe InDesign, but if you forced me to focus on the one feature I couldn’t live without, it would have to be paragraph styles. One can design beautiful documents in InDesign without them, but why would you? There are three reasons why you should consider using styles on a regular basis:

1. you can apply multiple formatting attributes to an entire paragraph with just one click;
2. the use of styles will ensure consistent treatments of headings, lists, etc. throughout a document; and
3. you can make a last minute edit to the style and know that all paragraphs using that style will be updated as you click on OK.

There are a variety of ways to create paragraph styles in Design, but the easiest is just to play with your paragraph formatting until you have perfected it, and then save it as a style. For example:

1. Select a subhead in your document.
   
2. Using options from the Control Panel, select the typeface, type style, size, etc. Keep experimenting with the formatting until you are satisfied with the look.
   
3. Choose Format > Paragraph Styles to open up the Styles panel.
4. Hold down the Option key (on Windows: Alt) and click on the New Paragraph Style button at the bottom of the panel.
   
5. Type in a short, descriptive name (i.e., Subhead) and add a check in front Apply Style to Selection, and in front of Preview, if necessary. Note that the Style Settings section has picked up all of the formatting from the selected paragraph.
   
6. Click OK.

That’s it! Now you can scroll through the document, and when you find another subhead, just click on the subhead paragraph and then click on the style name in Paragraph Styles panel. It’s that easy: by saving the style you can assign multiple formatting attributes to your paragraphs with a single click and you will ensure consistent treatment of the subheads throughout the document.

But what about my final reason to use styles? To me, it is by far the most important. After 25 years of document layout, I’m pretty good at estimating how much time it will take to lay out a new project, but I’ve never nailed down how much time to allow for those last minute edits that come in right at deadline, with no prior warning. Something like, “Hey Barb, did you remember to change the subheads to Myriad 15/17?” I may be thinking, uh no, this is the first time you’ve mentioned it, but knowing that I’ve used a style for my subheads, I can graciously offer to take care of it before sending the file off for print. To edit the subhead style:

1. Re-open the Paragraph styles panel, if necessary.
2. Control click (Windows: Right click) on the style name in the panel and choose Edit “Subhead”:
   
3. Make your changes and click OK. InDesign locates and updates every single paragraph using Subhead in the document, and it just look a couple of seconds!

Final thoughts: I used a subhead paragraph for this example. You will need additional styles for body paragraphs, titles, bylines, lists, blockquotes, etc. You can use the exact same sequence for each of these, and any other additional styles you may need. I normally start with the body paragraph style, because then I can use Edit > Select all to assign the body style to the entire story. After that, I start at the top of the document and work my way down, creating new styles as I go. Have fun!

by Barb Binder

A little known addition to Adobe InDesign CS4 was the ability to replace an object by pasting the contents of the clipboard. This can be useful in a variety of ways, but it’s is the single easiest way to replace a text string with an icon in a document. Here’s how:

1. Select an image with the Selection tool. In my example below, I want to replace the word airline with the icon of the airplane, so I selected the airplane icon in the top left corner:
   
2. Edit > Copy
3. Edit > Find/Change
4. Type in the word you want to find, in my example it’s “airplane”. Next, click the @ icon at the far right of the Change to line. Choose Other > Clipboard Contents to tell InDesign to paste the contents of the clipboard:
   
   In this example, you can pick either Formatted or Unformatted. Since we are pasting an icon, it won’t make a difference. If you use this later with text in the clipboard, you’ll be able to specifiy if the text should be pasted with or without it’s formatting. I picked Formatted, so my Find/Change dialog box looks like this:
   
5. Pick Change All to replace each occurrence of the word “airline” with the icon. It’s that easy!
   

p.s. In the spirit of full disclosure, I applied a baseline shift of -9 to shift the airplanes down so that they appear centered on the text lines. If you are going to do this, be smart and create a Character Style to handle the shift and then apply it during the find/change so that it’s all automatic:

In my opinion, your software works for you, and the running theme in my training classes is how to automate your workflow so that your layout comes together quickly and leaves nights and weekends for fun, and not trying to meet your deadline. InDesign offers you many ways to automate, but the first thing I suggest you do is set up your defaults. InDesign defaults come in two flavors: system defaults and publication defaults.

System Defaults

System defaults are used by all future documents. If you find yourself always changing the typeface for each new document, or always having to add your corporate colors to each new document, then it’s time to stop and change your system defaults. Here’s how:

1. Open InDesign.
2. Close all open documents.
3. Double check that all documents are closed by looking at the bottom of the Window menu. If any files are listed at the bottom, you have minimized but not closed them. You must close all files before continuing.
4. With all documents closed (have I made that clear?), you may be surprised that you can still access various menu commands and panel menu commands. Here’s why: anything you choose now will permanently change how InDesign works from this point out. For example, if you add or delete colors in the Swatches panel right now, you will change the displayed colors in the Swatches panel in all new documents. (System defaults never change existing documents, on your future documents.)
5. Take some time to look at what’s available and pick your favorite settings. What a timesaver!

Document Defaults

Document defaults are used within a single file. For new users, the immediate need is how to remove inadvertent document defaults, for advanced users, it’s how to set them up on purpose. To set (or reset) document defaults:

1. Open up an InDesign document.
2. Select the Selection Tool in the Toolbox (the black arrow).
3. Click on an empty part of the page or better still, chose Edit > Deselect All.
4. Without any objects selected, take a look at the various menus and panel menus. Any choices you make in the menus without an object selected will change the defaults for this one file.
5. Take some time to look at what’s available and pick your favorite settings. Remember though, that by definition, document defaults only affect this one document. All future new documents will rely on your system defaults.

Resetting Defaults

With the information above, you now have the skills to manually reset system and document defaults to the choices that work best for you. Sometimes, though, you just want to start over with the system defaults that InDesign ships with. For example, I usually have my students reset their defaults before class, so that I know exactly what their settings are and can keep the troubleshooting time to a minimum. Here’s how:

1. Save and close all InDesign documents.
2. Close InDesign.
3. This is the hard part:
   1. Windows: set up the fingers on one hand to hover over Control and Shift and Alt.
   2. Mac: set up the fingers on one hand to hover over Command and Control and Shift and Option.
4. Use the mouse to double click the InDesign icon and then IMMEDIATELY press down on keys listed above.
5. You can let go of the mouse, but keep the keys down until you get this message:
   
6. Click Yes and InDesign will reopen using the original system defaults. Don’t worry about deleting the Preferences file. InDesign will recreate it the next time you exit the program.

By Barb Binder

Adobe InDesign allows us to attach rules either above a paragraph, below a paragraph, or both. This is a very useful feature for setting off headings, and significantly better than grabbing the Line tool and drawing the lines yourself. If you’ve ever done that, you know that you have to be constantly adjusting the line positions manually when you edit the text around them. Here are some examples of Paragraph Rules above, below and both:

To access the Paragraph Rules dialog box, you will need to click the Control Panel menu, or just type Ctrl+Alt+J (Cmd+Opt+J). For standard rules above and below, the dialog box is pretty easy to figure out. Play for a bit before moving on.

Now, on to Reverse Heads. The easiest way to make a reverse head is to simply define a Ruling Line above the Paragraph and then shift it into position.

1. Select a one-line heading.
   
2. Choose Paragraph Rules from the Control Panel Menu.
   
3. Turn on the Preview checkbox so that you can see what you are doing to your paragraph.
4. In my example, I’m using Myriad Pro 22/26, so I set the specs as follows:
   
   I started by turning the Rule Above On, and then set the weight to a size larger than my typesize. I also changed the color from the default “Same as text color” (or I’d never see the text)! I choose Black, because I will changing the type to Paper in the next step. To center the line vertically over the text, adjust the Offset value.
5. I like my rule, but I can’t read the text anymore! Before you deselect, make sure you change the fill swatch to [Paper] (and I centered the alignment):
   
6. Definitely take a moment to save this as a Paragraph Style, so that you can use it again and again  with one-click access.
   

If you’ve been a faithful reader of the Adobe InDesign Stroke series, you may have guessed that a custom underline would also do the trick. It would but, underlines are character level formats and you’d have to highlight each head and assign the Character style, and you don’t have the same width controls as you do for Paragraph Rules.  For example, a few quick clicks can easily change the width of the Rules, underlines only underline the actual characters. For example:

The first image shows a Column-wide rule, the second shows a Text-wide rule and the third shows a Text-wide rule with -1p0 left and right indents (specified in the Paragraph Rules dialog box.) Got questions? Just let me know.

If you followed the whole series on strokes, underlines and now paragraph rules, it’s time to pull them altogether! Check out combining paragraph rules and underlines.

By Barb Binder

Underlines are one of things that can identify you as new to design and layout. Originally a proofreader’s mark for italics, underlines took on a life of their own during the typewriter years, when they were one of the only ways one could emphasize text. In professionally typeset documents, you are very unlikely to see underlines used for emphasis; instead you might see italics, a weight change, a color change or some combination of the above. In a nutshell, you really don’t want to use underlines in your printed documentation as a form of emphasis.

Ok, so why, you must be wondering, is this the first of two blog posts devoted to underlining in InDesign? The answer is that because custom underlines can do some pretty cool things that go way beyond solid black lines that underscore text.

1. Open up a document with some sample text to play with.
2. Select a couple of random words, and apply underlining by clicking on the Underline button on the Control Panel.
   
   
3. It’s not very attractive is it? It’s pretty darn easy to customize the underlines though, so that transition from boring to fun. Start by reselecting one of the underlined words, and then hold the Alt/Opt button as you click on the Underline button again in the Control panel. Look at that! A dialog box opens up, with underline controls:
   
4. Turn on the Preview button and then play with the Weight, Offset and Text Color options. It gets better when you pick a more interesting underline like Wavy.
   
5. Still not exciting enough? How about if you try out the Easter Egg rules we added in Adobe InDesign: Creating New Stroke Styles?
   

A final thought. You may love the lights or the waves, but your boss might not. You can save the underline as a character style, and if you get the kibosh on the lights, you can always just double click the character style, navigate to the Underline Options and try something more restrained, like, uh…Feet!

Still want more info on underlines? Check out how to customize underlines to highlight text.