Format Paragraphs


The Paragraph palette is where you find tools to align type. Illustrator CS allows you to align paragraph type to the right, left, or center. There are also four alignment options for full justification. The full justification feature lets you decide how to align the last line of a full-justified paragraph (left, center, right, or full justified).

The Paragraph palette also defines indenting for a paragraph. You can set indentation from the left, right (or both), and also first line indenting. These features work like those in your word processor or desktop publishing program, and you ll pick them up quickly on your own.

Select Window Type Paragraph to view the Paragraph palette. To align or indent text, first select a specific paragraph within a text box. You can perform this task easily by triple-clicking on a paragraph with the Type tool. With a paragraph selected, you re ready to apply formatting.

Align Paragraphs

With a paragraph selected, use the self-evident alignment buttons in the Paragraph palette to left-, center-, or right-align the text. Use the Justify Last Left, Centered, or Right option to justify every line but the last in a paragraph with the right and left edges of the text box, and use the Justify All button to stretch all of the lines to the left and right borders of the text box, including the last. This last option will create very large spacing in short lines of text.

Full justification often creates awkward looking spacing in the final line of a paragraph. For instance, if the line only has a few characters , the spacing required to stretch that text across the entire width of a column looks just plain ugly. To help resolve this, Illustrator CS introduces some helpful new alignment options. The Justify Last Left, Justify Last Centered, and Justify Last Right options all assign full justification except to the last line, which is aligned at the left, center, or right. Figure 9-8 identifies the paragraph alignment tools and demonstrates a couple of the new alignment options.

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Figure 9-8: Paragraph alignment options allow for justification with left, right, or center alignment (not shown) for the last line in a paragraph.

The other boxes in the Paragraph palette (except for the last one) define horizontal indentation and spacing around paragraphs (in points):

  • Indent Left Margin    This box defines how far to indent the entire selected paragraph from the left edge of the text box.

  • Indent First Line    In this box you can define how far to indent (or outdent) the first line of the paragraph in relation to the rest of the paragraph. A positive value indents the first line of the paragraph. A negative value outdents the first line of the paragraph, which is useful, for example, for numbered or bulleted lists where a number or bullet extends out to the left of the text, as shown in Figure 9-9.

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    Figure 9-9: A positive Indent Left Margin setting is combined with a negative Indent First Line value to create the bulleted list paragraph format.

  • Indent Right Margin     This box defines the space between the right edge of the text and the right edge of the text box.

  • Space Before Paragraph     You can use this box to define line spacing before the selected paragraph(s).

  • Space After Paragraph    In this box you can define line spacing after the selected paragraph(s).

  • Hyphenation    This checkbox turns on automatic hyphenation.

Display Hidden Characters

As you add more character and paragraph spacing attributes to type, it can get confusing as to where spacing is coming from. For instance, did you add double-spacing between paragraphs? Or did you just insert an extra paragraph break? You can sort all this out by revealing hidden characters. Do that by choosing Type Show Hidden Characters. If all the hidden characters become confusing, turn it off the same way (by deselecting Show Hidden Characters from the Type menu). The space, paragraph, and tab characters are identified in Figure 9-10.

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Figure 9-10: In this text box, hidden characters are displayed to make it easier to manage spacing.

Set Tabs

You set tabs and indentation with the Tabs palette (Window Type Tabs). Working with tabs in Illustrator is similar to working with them in word processors such as Microsoft Word. First you select some text, and then you define the tab settings. By default, tabs are set as left-aligned tabs and spaced every 0.5 inch.

Use the Tabs palette to resize tabs. The palette is resizable and can be aligned with selected text by clicking the Position Palette Above Text button on the right edge of the tab ruler.

The Tabs palette has four buttons that allow you to select the type of tab you want to define: left-, center-, right-, or decimal-justified. After you select a type of tab (usually left-aligned), either click the ruler to define the tab or enter a value in the X box in the palette.

If you select a Decimal-Justified tab, you can define a character other than the default period character in the Align On box. The character you define in that box will be the one used to line up your tabbed breaks.

The Leader box allows you to define a character that will repeat to fill the tab space. Figure 9-11 shows text with a left-aligned tab set at 0.25 inches, with a period used as a tab leader.

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Figure 9-11: Setting a tab with a leader

You can also use the movable markers on the left edge of the ruler to define first line (the top marker) or paragraph indentation. These options provide a graphical alternative to defining indentation in the Paragraph palette.

Note  

The unit of measurement for the Tabs palette is determined by the selected unit in the Preferences dialog box. To change this unit, choose Illustrator (Edit) Preferences Units & Display Performance. Choose a unit of measurement (such as inches) in the General drop-down list to set the ruler increments for the Tabs palette. Or, if you wish, you can enter a unit of measurement in the tab ruler (such as 0.25 in to enter a value in inches) and it will be converted to the assigned unit of measurement (in the case of 0.25 inches, the conversion is to 18 points).




How to Do Everything with Illustrator CS
How to Do Everything with Adobe Illustrator CS
ISBN: 0072230924
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 175
Authors: David Karlins

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