Professional Typesetting Techniques

Topics covered in this InDesign tutorial:

Bulleted lists, Hanging bullets, Hyphenation, Discretionary hyphens, Special break characters

Exercise Preview

Exercise Overview

These are typesetting techniques only the pros know. You will learn the finer points of hanging bullets, bulleted lists, new line and column break characters, and of course the incredibly important discretionary hyphen.

1. Open the InDesign file called BigBook.indd by choosing File > Open.

   If you get a message about missing or modified links, click Update Links. Because the images are in the same folder, InDesign will just find them and you’re all set.

Hanging Bullets/Check Marks

You’ll see that this is a 2-page spread for The Big Book of Life’s Instructions. We’re going to use the Indent to Here character and another technique for hanging bullets.

1. On the left page (pg 32), near the bottom, you’ll see three paragraphs that begin with check marks. We would like to have the check marks hanging, so we are going to put Indent to Here commands right before the first letter after each check mark.

2. Choose the Type tool and position the cursor before the A after the first “bullet” (which is a check mark).

3. Press Command–\ (Mac) or Ctrl–\ (Windows). (The backslash is often above the Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) key.)

   You will see the rest of the paragraph indent from that point.

4. Do the same to the two other paragraphs that follow.

Another Technique to Make Lists/Hanging Bullets

At the top of the right page (pg 33), under “When inspecting the car…” there is a list with multiple items. We will use InDesign’s list feature to turn these into a list and add the bullets for us—so we don’t have to enter them manually.

1. Select all the paragraphs in the list, from “Under the hood…” up to (but not including) the “The Test Drive” heading that follows the list.

2. In the Control panel, make sure you are viewing Paragraph options (this button is on the left of the panel).

3. Click the Bulleted List button .

4. Open the Tabs panel (Type > Tabs).

5. If it’s not already there, move the Tabs panel above the bulleted list as shown below. (Don’t worry about positioning it exactly; just get it close.)

   

6. Hold Shift and drag the small triangle shown below to the left to decrease the space between the bullets and the text.

   

   NOTE: This triangle is very small, so it is easy to accidentally click on the wrong area and create a tab . If you do accidentally create a tab, simply drag it anywhere off the Tabs panel as shown below:

   

7. When you are finished adjusting the space between the bullets and text, close the Tabs panel.

8. To change the type of bullet, make sure all the paragraphs in the list are still selected.

9. At the right of the Control panel, go into the panel menu and choose Bullets and Numbering.

10. There is a different bullet we want to add to our options, so click the Add button.

11. At the bottom of the window, change the Font Family to Wingdings.

12. Choose any icon you’d like for the bullet and click OK.

13. At the top of the window, select the new bullet character and at the bottom of the window, check on Preview.

14. Look at the list to make sure you like the new bullet. When done, click OK.

Controlling the Number of Hyphens

1. Go to View > Fit Spread in Window.

2. Using the Type tool , click anywhere in the text.

3. Go to Edit > Select All.

4. Go into the Control panel menu and choose Hyphenation.

5. Make sure Preview is checked on at the right.

6. At the top of the window, check on Hyphenate. Then set the options shown below, but do NOT click OK until we say!

   

7. To experiment with different hyphenations, move the slider back and forth and watch the document to see how it changes.

   

   Better Spacing will have more hyphens. Fewer Hyphens will not be spaced as nicely.

8. Move the slider all the way towards Better Spacing.

9. Click OK.

Discretionary Hyphens

If you want more local control than the Hyphenation settings give, you can use discretionary hyphens to override the default placement of a hyphen or remove the hyphen altogether. This isn’t an exact science, as InDesign will try to maintain good line breaks. Based on the new hyphenation, it may decide it can do something different to make the paragraph look better. Let’s try it so you can see what we mean.

1. On the left page, in the third paragraph under the subhead “Where to Go” find the hyphenated word protection at the end of the second line.

2. On the line after the “pro-” place the cursor between “tec” and “tion” and press Cmd–Shift–Hyphen (Mac) or Ctrl–Shift–Hyphen (Windows). You see that “protec” comes up to the line above. That worked as we’d expect, because the spacing that it created is still good. So InDesign kept that change without compensating elsewhere.

3. Let’s try a second one. On the right page, in the first paragraph under “Consumer Protection” find the hyphenated word consumer at the end of the second line.

4. Place the cursor between “con” and “sum” and press Cmd–Shift–Hyphen (Mac) or Ctrl–Shift–Hyphen (Windows).

   You’d expect InDesign to just hyphenate the word after “con” but instead it brings the word “car” up from the second line to the first line, to better even out the spacing. Therefore it doesn’t need to hyphenate “consumer.”

5. Play around a bit with these two hyphenation techniques to see their effect on other paragraphs.

   NOTE: To have the hyphenation settings affect only one paragraph, click in any single paragraph, then go into the Control panel menu and choose Hyphenation.

The New Line Character (Forced Line Break)

1. In the bulleted list at the top of the right page, the fifth bullet down starts with “The tires, for correct…” Click right before the parentheses of “(and see…”.

2. We’d like to bring it down to the next line, but if we press Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows), a new paragraph/bulleted item will be created. Try it and see how the text becomes another bullet point in the list and InDesign automatically adds the bullet for you.

3. Immediately Undo this.

4. We need a way to get the text down without using a Return. That’s where the New Line Character comes in. To get it, make sure your cursor is still in front of that parentheses and press Shift–Return (Mac) or Shift–Enter (Windows).

5. You’ll see it now goes to the next line, but remains in the same paragraph/bullet. To see what the Forced Line Break looks like as an invisible character, go into Type > Show Hidden Characters and look at the blue at the end of the line.

The New Column Character (Column Break)

1. At the bottom of the left page, do you see that blue “invisible” ? It’s very small so you’ll probably need to zoom in to see it. That’s the Column Break character. You get it by typing the Enter key at the far right end of the keyboard (in the number pad). Use it when you need the text to start in a completely new column.

   That’s it! Remember these techniques; they separate average users from the pros.