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• • November 6, 2013 at 10:17 am #66109
    Krister Swartz

    Member

    Hello all,
    I’m laying out a 360-page book in perpetual and am trying to adjust the justification. If I use the Justification box in the paragraph style options, I can adjust word spacing and by keeping the preview on I can see the flow of yellow in my document. However, with such a long document I’m having a hard time assessing the results of changing the settings. Some yellow lines disappear and others appear. Is there a trick to this? Also, I assume I’m never going to get it perfect using this tactic. Is there another step other than going in and line by line adjusting?
    Thanks for any help!

  • November 7, 2013 at 1:14 pm #66121
    Dwayne Harris

    Member

    Are you using InDesign’s paragraph composer or single-line?

    The paragraph composer really does a good job.

    And even though it does, it won’t be perfect, and sometimes one will still have to tweak a line here and there.

    Personally, I never have the preview on, as I can judge by eye what looks good and what doesn’t. And when it’s turned on, you can go crazy just looking at it and worrying about getting rid of them. If you prefer to use that feature, just remember that it’s only a guide as to spacing violations per InDesign and the settings you chose. To be honest, you will see a violation no matter your settings. One paragraph will be fine, but another may not. (Not the entire paragraph, but lines here and there).

    What settings are you using for your H&Js? In the books we do, my normal settings are:

    Minimum: 85 / Desired: 100 / Maximum: 150. Sometimes I will change those a little depending upon the font.

    For the hyphenation I allow 3 up, 3 down, and 2 hyphens in a row maximum.

    Maybe try those settings and be sure to have paragraph composer turned on in your style sheets.

    And personally, I’d turn off that preview feature of H&J violations.

  • November 9, 2013 at 10:48 am #66143
    Krister Swartz

    Member

    @Dwayne, Thanks for the response, most helpful. I only turned on the preview because I was hoping it would better show me the difference when I was playing around with the word spacing values, but there is just too much information for me to process. I have mine set, by the way, to 80 / 100 / 120, but only because I ended up there. Can’t really say that it is better than any other value. I have the same hyphenation values as you and yes, I’m on paragraph composer.

    Should I turn off paragraph composer when I go in to fix a line here or there? I can see arguments for either.

    Thanks again for the help.

    Best,
    K

  • November 10, 2013 at 11:31 am #66145
    Dwayne Harris

    Member

    Hey Krister

    I would not turn off the composer when fixing a line. Chances are if you switch it to single-line then it will rebreak differently. You’re better off keeping it on, and then tweaking lines as you see fit.

    It’s possible lines above where you are tweaking will change, but you can always rebreak those.

    Once paragraph composer is turned on, your best bet is to leave it on.

  • November 11, 2013 at 7:37 am #66146
    Krister Swartz

    Member

    Okay. Thanks again for your help.

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