Highlight word and letter spacing

In the Highlight section in InDesign's composition preferences you can set InDesign to highlight some spacing matters: whether a line is looser or tighter than what is allowed by the settings in the Justification dialog, whether custom kerning has been applied to a pair of characters, and whether some text has been tracked.

What is missing, unfortunately, are options to highlight word and letter spacing. The script remedies that by highlighting paragraphs with deviating word spacing in lilac, letter spacing in green. When both word and letter spacing have been applied, both colours are shown. See the screenshot. Like Indesign's highlights, the highlights set by the script show only in the Normal screen mode, not in Preview.

Use

The script has no interface, just run it. It compares the word and letter spacing of each paragraph with that of its applied paragraph style and highlights deviations in lilac (word spacing), green (letter spacing), or both. The colours are set in conditions which are applied to the paragraphs so that the formatting of the paragraphs is not affected in any way.

To remove the highlights, remove the conditions (Window > Type & Tables > Conditional Text).

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Show script (right click, Save Link/Target As to download)

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