Automatic Drop Cap Styling


If you look at the opening paragraph of each chapter of this book, you'll notice that the typeface for the drop cap is not the same as the rest of the text in the paragraph. In early editions of this book, I had to manually drag across every single drop cap character and change it to a character style. These days InDesign has a feature that makes it possible to automatically style the drop cap character.

Tip

Use this technique if you want to apply an automatic drop cap without defining a paragraph style. Use the exercise on the next page if you want to apply the automatic drop cap as part of a paragraph style.


To apply automatic drop cap character styling:

1.

Define a character style (see page 375) that contains the formatting for the drop cap character.

2.

Place your insertion point anywhere inside the paragraph that you want to style with the drop cap.

Tip

Nope, you don't have to put the insertion point at the front of the paragraph.

3.

Choose Drop Caps and Nested Styles from the Paragraph palette menu. The Drop Caps and Nested Styles dialog box appears .

The Drop Caps and Nested Styles dialog box allows you to automate the style applied to drop caps.

4.

Use the Lines field to set the number of lines that the drop cap character will descend into the text .

Set the Lines and Characters fields to the number of lines for the drop cap and the number of characters to be formatted.

5.

Use the Characters field to set the number of characters that will be turned into a drop cap character .

6.

Use the Character Style menu to choose the predefined character style to assign to the drop cap character .

Use the Character Style menu to assign a character style to format the drop cap character.

7.

Click OK. The drop cap with the character style is applied to the selected paragraph.

The previous exercise works great if you have only one drop cap paragraph you need to style. But if you're working with many paragraphs that need to be formatted, you're much better off making the automatic drop cap part of a paragraph style sheet. That way you can style all the text with a single, magical click.

To apply automatic drop cap in a paragraph style:

1.

Define a character style (see page 375) that contains the formatting for the drop cap character.

2.

Choose to define a new paragraph style (see page 369).

3.

Choose the Drop Caps and Nested Styles category from the Paragraph Styles dialog box . The Drop Caps controls appear .

The Drop Caps and Nested Styles category for paragraph styles allows you to automate drop cap characters as you apply a paragraph style.

The controls for automatic Drop Caps within the Paragraph Style Options dialog box.

4.

Set the Lines field as described on the previous page.

5.

Set the Characters field as described on the previous page.

6.

Set the Character Style menu as described on the previous page.

7.

Set whatever other formatting you want in the Paragraph Styles dialog box.

8.

Click OK to define the paragraph style.

9.

Use the Paragraph Styles palette to assign this paragraph style to text. This allows you to assign the automatic drop cap to make paragraphs.

Searching for Repeating Elements

It may seem difficult to find repeating elements, but they are much easier to find than you might think.

Consider the steps in my exercises. The numbers are always separated from the rest of the body copy by a tab character. So I can easily set the tab as the repeating element for a nested style.

If you are formatting any text that comes from databases, it is extremely easy to have the people who create the database add tab characters to divide the different parts of the text. Then you can use the repeating tab characters to format with the nested styles.




InDesign CS2 for Macintosh and Windows(c) Visual QuickStart Guide
InDesign CS4 for Macintosh and Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide
ISBN: 0321573579
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 309
Authors: Sandee Cohen

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