text formatting issues Indesign CS6

wonderings · Oct 23rd, 2012, 09:28 AM

I dont do a lot of large text formatting with indesign, and have with this yearly job have always hacked my way around to get what it the way I wanted. It was not pretty but it worked. This is a program for a Christmas festival concert, 24 pages, of which most is text that I have will be type setting (lyrics, composers, soloists, etc)

Because they put in the words for some of the songs they need to have the copyright info as well with the song. Normally I have have just made a new text box, sized it the way I wanted and positioned it where I wanted. This becomes a real nightmare when they have changes and the entire document reflows. Obviously I would have to go and manually reposition this copyright info. I was going to insert it right into the text box, in which everything is linked. The problem is this info is much smaller, and in some cases 2 or 3 lines. When I try to adjust the spacing (leading) it becomes a mess and I cannot seem to figure out how to tighten this up without effecting the rest of the text that does need to be adjusted this way. I have taken some screen shots of what I am talking about:

1) I have highlighted the info I need to adjust. For some reason the second line looks different when highlighted (black box bigger).

2) Adjusting the spacing with the text selected leads me to this:

3) Adjust the spacing on just the bottom line gives me nothing at all to tighten up, but does go the opposite way to give me more space, but not less. You can see the change in Leading from 9 to 2, nothing changes at all.

I am sure there must be something small I am missing here, so what is it? How do I adjust this text, without messing up everything else to get it to look like this?

JAMG · Oct 23rd, 2012, 11:20 AM

What I think you want to do is set the tighter leading for the Copyright paragraph but have space between paragraphs.
The entire Copyright should have the same leading, then go to your Menu - Type/Paragraph and adjust the space before or space after variable.
or on your measurement bar at the top of the screen, I think it is the variables just to the right of the button <Basic Paragraph>
Sorry I do not have access to Indesign right now to post a screen shot.

Visual-Q · Oct 24th, 2012, 11:33 AM

Yes what you want is paragraph spacing to maintain space between items independent of leading. Paragraph spacing inserts specified space above or below or both between any two items with a paragraph return between them. Note it does not affect soft returns (shift-return)s also called forced line breaks which do not create new paragraph items.

It would also appear your leading is not working properly. It is likely you have an invisible character at the end of the line that is formatted different from the rest. Probably a carraige return.

Turn on Show Hidden Character to see and select these items.

jishan · Nov 15th, 2012, 03:29 AM

this is a nice work but i don't understand the benefit of doing such writing. you can not write a paragraph,blog or articles in the way you described.so, can you tell me what is the reason to change writing style.