Setting Other Paragraph Formats | Adobe InDesign CS3 Bible

The Paragraph pane's and Control palette's palette menu contains two additional paragraph-formatting options:

Keep Options lets you determine how and when paragraphs can be split when they fall at the bottom of a column or page.
Paragraph Rules lets you place a horizontal line in front of or after a paragraph. Lines placed using the Paragraph Rules feature become part of the text and move along with surrounding text when editing causes text reflow .

Keep Options

A widow is the last line of a paragraph that falls at the top of a column (the poor thing has been cut off from the rest of the family). An orphan is the first line of a paragraph that falls at the bottom of a column (it, too, has become separated from its family). InDesign's Keep Options feature lets you prevent widows and orphans; it also lets you keep paragraphs together when they would otherwise be broken at the bottom of a column.

When you choose Keep Options from the Paragraph pane's or Control palette's palette menu, the Keep Options dialog box, shown in Figure 18-7, is displayed.

Figure 18-7: The Keep Options dialog box.

The Keep Options dialog box provides several options for how paragraphs are managed as text breaks across columns and pages:

Keep with Next Lines: This option applies to two consecutive paragraphs. Specify the number of lines of the second paragraph that must stay with the first paragraph if a column or page break occurs within the second paragraph. This option is useful for preventing a subhead from being separated from the paragraph that follows .
Keep Lines Together: Click this check box to prevent paragraphs from breaking and to control widows and orphans. When this box is checked, the two radio buttons below it become available. (The radio buttons present an either/or choice. One must be selected; At Start/End of Paragraph is selected by default.)
All Lines in Paragraph: Select this option to prevent a paragraph from being broken at the end of a column or page. When a column or page break occurs within a paragraph to which this setting has been applied, the entire paragraph moves to the next column or page.

At Start/End of Paragraph: Click this button to control widows and orphans. When this button is selected, the two fields below it become available:

Start Lines: This field controls orphans. The value you enter is the minimum number of lines at the beginning of a paragraph that must be placed at the bottom of a column when a paragraph is split by a column ending.
End Lines: This field controls widows. The value you enter is the minimum number of lines at the end of a paragraph that must be placed at the top of a column when a paragraph is split by a column ending.

Caution ‚

Keep in mind that when you eliminate an orphan widow using Keep Options, the line that precedes the widow line is bumped to the next column or page, which can produce uneven column endings on multicolumn pages.

Start Paragraph: From this pop-up menu, choose In Next Column to force a paragraph to begin in the next column or frame; choose On Next Page to force a paragraph to begin on the next page (such as for chapter headings). Your other choices are similar: On Next Odd Page and On Next Even Page. Choose Anywhere to let the paragraph begin where it would fall naturally in the sequence of text (no forced break).

Paragraph Rules

Usually, the easiest way to create a horizontal line is to use the Line Tool. But if you want to place a horizontal line within text so that the line moves with the text when editing causes the text to reflow, you need to create a paragraph rule. A paragraph rule looks much like a line created with the line tool but behaves like a text character. Paragraph rules have many uses. For example, you can place one above or below a subhead to make it more noticeable or to separate the subhead from the paragraph that precedes or follows it. Or you could place paragraph rules above and below a pull quote so that the rules and the pull quote text move if editing causes text reflow.

Here's how:

Select the paragraph(s) to which you want to apply a rule above and/or a rule below, then choose Paragraph Rules from the Paragraph pane's or Control palette's palette menu, or use the shortcut Option+ z +J or Ctrl+Alt+J.

You can also specify this as part of a paragraph style. The Paragraph Rules dialog box, shown in Figure 18-8, is displayed.

Figure 18-8: The Paragraph Rules dialog box.
Choose Rule Above or Rule Below, then click Rule On.

You can add a rule above, below, or both. If you want to add rules above and below, you must click Rule On for both options and specify their settings separately. If you want to see the rule as you create it, click the Preview button.
For Weight, choose a predefined thickness from the pop-up menu or enter a value in the field.
Choose a rule type from the Type pop-up menu.

Typically, you'd use just a simple line, but InDesign offers 17 types of lines, including dashed, striped, dotted , and wavy.
Choose a color from the Color pop-up menu, which lists the colors displayed in the Swatches pane (Window ‚ Swatches, or F5).

If you choose Text Color, InDesign automatically uses the color applied to the first character in the paragraph. If your ruling line is not a plain line, you can also choose the Gap Color to determine what color goes between dashes, stripes , dots, and so on in your line. For both the Color and Gap Color options, you can specify a corresponding tint ( shade ) with the Tint and Gap Tint pop-up menus , respectively.
From the Width pop-up menu, choose Column if you want the rule to extend from the left edge of the column to the right edge of the column; choose Text if you want the rule to extend from the left edge of the frame or column to the line ending on the right.
To indent the rule from the left and/or right edges, enter values in the Left Indent and/or Right Indent fields.
To control the vertical position of the rule, enter a value in the Offset field.

For a rule above, the offset value is measured upward from the baseline of the first line in a paragraph to the bottom of the rule; for a rule below, the offset is measured downward from the baseline of the last line in a paragraph to the top of the rule.
Click the Overprint Stroke box if you want to print a rule on top of any underlying colors.

This ensures that any misregistration during printing will not result in white areas around the rule where the paper shows through. You typically use this for black or other dark colors. There's a similar Overprint Gap check box for lines that have a Gap Color.
Click OK to close the dialog box, implement your changes, and return to your document.

To remove a paragraph rule, click in the paragraph to which the rule is applied, choose Paragraph Rules from the Paragraph pane's pop-up menu, uncheck the Rule On box, then click OK.

Tip ‚

You can use the Paragraph Rules feature to place a band of color behind text by specifying a line thickness at least 2 points larger than the text size and offsetting the rule so it moves up behind the text.