inDesign Tip #14 Using leaders and aligniment options for tabs

What we are accomplishing: Using the leader and alignment options located in the tabs palette to allow you to do advanced editing with text.

When working in inDesign, certain tasks may call for special formatting of tabs.  For this example, let’s say that you have a table of contents that  contains a list of chapters with a corresponding page number that appears on the opposite side of the page.  You will probably want to do 2 things.  One,  you need to have a dotted line that will go across the page to connect the page number to the chapter title. Two, the page numbers should be aligned so that a word or character (in this example I will use BOOK 2) is always aligned so that page numbers extend to the left when they become larger.  Now, there are plenty of ways to accomplish both of these feats.  However, using the tools provided within the tabs palette will save a lot of time and frustration.  To begin, you will need to open your tabs palette.  Go to Type > Tabs to open this palette.  Once open, you will be able to set your tabs to the desired positions.  For now, place a “Center Justified Tab” in the area that you want the page number to be.  Now that this tab is here, make sure that you select it and that the tab appears to be highlighted.  With the tab selected, fill in the “Leader:” box with the character that you would like to repeat (in this case, using a ° to circle to create a line of dots) and press enter.  Now you should have dotted line of characters.  If you need to make further adjustments to the dotted line, you can format the “tab” character as if it were typed text.  Now then, to change the tabs behavior to react to the word BOOK, select the center tab that you created previously.  With the tab selected, change the tab itself to the “Align to Decimal” tab type located on the right of the tab selections.  Next, select the “Align On:” located to the right of the “Leader” box.  Here, you can enter in the word BOOK to make it recognize those characters.  Voila!  Now when you type to the left of the word BOOK, the text will continue to flow to the left.

inDesign Tip #13 Creating a custom stroke style

What we are accomplishing: Creating your own custom stroke, so as to fit your needs.

Creating a custom stroke is quite simple, it’s just not very obvious.  First, you will need to open your strokes palette.  If you do not have it open, you can go to Window > Stroke to open it.  Once here, you should click on the flyout menu and select Stroke Styles.  This will bring up a new dialog box that contains the stroke styles you currently have.  Clicking on New will bring up another dialog box where you can change settings to create your new stroke style.  Just change the name and modify the settings to fit your preference.  Voila!  You have successfully created a new stroke style.

inDesign Tip #12 Converting Typographer’s (Smart) Quotes into Straight (Dumb) Quotes

What we are accomplishing: Changing Typographer’s quotes into straight quotes, or vice versa, for an entire document.  For a detailed explanation over dumb/smart quotes, visit this link.

For some designers, quotes can be a bit of hassle if a situation calls for a specific type.  Some company’s prefer the smart quote because it is more appropriate for design than the dumb quote.  However some instances would require the use of the dumb quotes to fill a certain criteria.  Here are two examples that I have faced regularly.

1.)  The use of dumb or straight quotes is the proper way to define measurement.  Therefore if you have inches (“) or feet (‘), the proper way to display them would be with straight quotes.

2.)  When using the Adobe program Flash, programming language is set to recognize straight quotes instead of typographer’s quotes for certain functions.  Therefore, if you copy text that you have written in inDesign over to Flash’s Actionscript without using straight quotes, any code that uses quotes will not function correctly.

So, now that I have fully explained the use of straight and typographer’s quotes, I shall move on to the solution to change all instances of them in a document.

To change your documents default use of quotes, go into your “Preferences” panel and select “Type…”.  Once here, you can turn on or off the use of Typographer’s quotes at the top the dialog box.  Now that your typographer’s quotes are off (or on) you can proceed to change them.  Please note, that turning on or off the typographer’s quotes in the dialog box will not change all the instances that you currently have in your document. To change all instances, you will have to do a find and replace.  Press ctrl+F to open the “Find and Replace” dialog box.  All you have to do is type in a quotation mark in the “Find” and a quotation mark in the “Replace” and hit “Replace All”.  Voila!  You have successfully  changed all of the quotations into their smart or dumb counterpart!

Also, if you are wondering how to change only a specific instance of the quotes, say in a sentence or a single time, you can find your font’s counterpart within it’s glyph set.

inDesign Tip #11 Rotating a page or spread within a document

What we are accomplishing: Re-orienting a single page inside a document, so as not to rotate other pages.

To change the rotation of a page, you first need to go to the page you wish to rotate.  Once on the desired page, go to “View > Rotate Spread”.  Here you will have the option to rotate the spread (or single page if you have page spreads turned off).  Just click on one of the degree options and voila!  You have successfully changed the rotation of a single page within a document.