Controlling Hyphenation and Justification

Automatic hyphenation

To automatically hyphenate selected paragraphs, all you have to do is check the Hyphenate check box in the Paragraph pane or Control palette. (The Hyphenate check box is displayed only if you choose Show Options from the palette menu.)

If you choose to hyphenate paragraphs, you can control how hyphenation is accomplished via the Hyphenation option in the palette menu. When you choose Hyphenation, the Hyphenation dialog box, shown in Figure 18-5, is displayed.

Figure 18-5: The Hyphenation dialog box.

Here's a brief description of each option:

• Hyphenate check box: This is a duplicate of the Hyphenate check box in the Paragraph pane and Control palette. If you didn't check it before opening the Hyphenation dialog box, you can check it here.

• Words with at Least Letters: Here, you specify the number of letters in the shortest word you want to hyphenate. For example, if you specify four letters, mama can be hyphenated, but any can't be.

• After First Letters: Here, you specify the minimum number of characters that can precede a hyphen. If you enter 2, for example, the word atavistic can be broken after at. If you specify 3, atavistic cannot be broken until after ata.

• Before Last Letters: This field is similar to After First Letters, but it determines the minimum number of characters that can follow a hyphen.

• Hyphenation Limit: Specify the number of consecutive lines that can be hyphenated in this field. Some designers limit the number of consecutive hyphens to two or three because they believe that too many consecutive hyphens produce an awkward , ladder-like look. If the Hyphenation Limit value you enter prevents hyphenation in a line that would otherwise be hyphenated, the line may look more spaced out than surrounding lines.

• Hyphenation Zone: This field applies only to nonjustified text and only when the Adobe Single-Line Composer option is selected (in the Paragraph pane's palette menu). A hyphenation point must fall within the distance specified in this field to be used. Otherwise-acceptable hyphenation points that do not fall within the specified hyphenation zone are ignored. You can also use the slider below the field to select a value rather than enter a value in this field.

• Hyphenate Capitalized Words: Select this option to break capitalized words, such as proper names and the first word of sentences. If you don't check this box, a capitalized word that would otherwise be hyphenated will get bumped to the next line, possibly producing excessive spacing in the previous line.

Consider changing the After First Letters hyphenation setting to 2 if you have narrow columns or large text. Although many typographers object to two-letter hyphenation ‚ as in ab-dicate or ra-dar ‚ it often looks better than text with large gaps caused by the reluctance to hyphenate such words. Hyphenation also makes sense for many words that use two-letter prefixes such as in-, re-, and co-.

Although I advocate two-letter hyphenation at the beginning of a word, I prefer three-letter hyphenation at the end (set via Before Last Letters). Except for words ending in -ed and sometimes -al, most words don't lend themselves to two-letter hyphenation at the end of the word. Part of this is functional ‚ it's easy for readers to lose two letters beginning a line. I prefer two-letter hyphenations at the end of a word only when the alternative is awkward spacing. As with all typography, this ultimately is a personal or house style choice.

Regardless of the two- versus three-letter debate, words broken using minimum settings of 1 look awful . They also go against reader expectations, because the norm is to have several letters after a hyphen. Never use a minimum setting of 1 for After First Letters. If you do, you get hyphenations such as A-sia , a-typical , and u-niform that simply look terrible in print. They also don't provide enough context for the reader to anticipate the rest of the word. Likewise, never use a minimum of 1 for Before Last Letters because you get hyphenations such as radi-o .

When you're done specifying hyphenation settings in the Hyphenation dialog box, click OK to close the dialog box and return to your document.

Justifications controls

InDesign provides three options for controlling how justification is achieved: You can

• Condense or expand the width of spaces, or spacebands, between words.

• Add or remove space between letters.

• Condense or expand the width of characters, or glyphs.

The options in the Justification dialog box, shown in Figure 18-6, let you specify the degree to which InDesign will adjust normal word spaces, character spacing, and character width to achieve justification. You access this dialog box via the palette menu in the Control palette or in the Paragraph pane, or by pressing Option+Shift+_ z +J or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+J. Although you can use the Justification controls on selected paragraphs, in most cases you will specify Justification settings when you create style sheets, particularly your body-text style sheets.

Figure 18-6: The Justification dialog box.

Here's a brief description of each option:

• Word Spacing: Enter the percentage of a spaceband character that you want to use whenever possible in the Desired field. (The default value is 100%, which uses a font's built-in width.) Enter the minimum acceptable percentage in the Minimum field; enter the maximum acceptable percentage in the Maximum field. The smallest value you can enter is 0%; the largest is 1000%. Some designers are adamant that only word spaces ‚ not letter spaces ‚ should be adjusted when justifying text. Others allow small adjustments to letter spacing as well.

• Letter Spacing: The default value of 0% in this field uses a font's built-in letter spacing. In the Desired field, enter a positive value to add space (in increments of 1% of an en space) between all letter pairs; enter a negative value to remove space. Enter the minimum acceptable percentage in the Minimum field; enter the maximum acceptable percentage in the Maximum field.

• Glyph Scaling: The default value of 100% uses a character's normal width. In the Desired field, enter a positive value to expand all character widths; enter a negative value to condense character widths. Enter the minimum acceptable percentage in the Minimum field; enter the maximum acceptable percentage in the Maximum field. Some designers adamantly contend that scaling characters is even more unacceptable than letter spacing, while others see no harm in scaling characters, as long as it's kept to a minimum. If you do apply glyph scaling, it's best to keep it to a range of 97 to 103 percent at most.

Word spacing ‚ the space between words ‚ is another important contributor to the aesthetics of a document. Think about it: If the words in a sentence are too close to one another, comprehension may be affected because of the difficulty in telling where one word ends and another begins. If the words are too far apart, the reader might have a difficult time following the thought that's being conveyed.

Here's a design rule I like to follow: The wider the column, the more space you can add between words. This is why books tend to have more word spacing than magazines. Like all other typographic issues, there's a subjective component to picking good word spacing. Experiment to see what works best in your documents.

If you use the Multi-Line Composer option (explained in the next section) for justified paragraphs, specifying a narrow range between minimum and maximum Word Spacing, Letter Spacing, and Glyph Scaling will generally produce good-looking results. However, if you choose the Single-Line Composer option, a broader range between Minimum and Maximum gives the composer more leeway in spacing words and letters and hyphenating words and can produce better-looking results. The best way to find out what values work best for you is to experiment with several settings. Print out hard copies and let your eyes decide which values produce the best results.

Composing text

The Paragraph pane's palette menu offers two choices for implementing the hyphenation and justification settings you've established: the Adobe Single-Line Composer and the Adobe Multi-Line Composer. (These are also available in the Justification dialog box covered in the previous section.)

Adobe Single-Line Composer

In the past, programs like QuarkXPress and PageMaker have used single-line composition methods to flow text. This method marches line by line through a paragraph and sets each line as well as possible using the applied hyphenation and justification settings. The effect of modifying the spacing of one line on the lines above and below is not considered in single-line composition. If adjusting the space within a line causes poor spacing on the next line, tough luck. When you use the Adobe Single-Line Composer, the following rules apply:

• Adjusting word spacing is preferred over hyphenation.

• Hyphenation is preferred over glyph scaling.

• If spacing must be adjusted, removing space is preferred over adding space.