Reply To: Turn off autoleading

It’s an excellent question and not immediately obvious. However, the main reason not to use Auto leading in InDesign is that each character has its own leading. So if you make a single character in the middle of a paragraph larger (for example 14 point instead of 12), then the leading changes for the entire line. Auto leading means “use whatever the leading is for the largest character on that line.”

Yes, the opposite of “auto leading” is not to turn it off, but rather just to apply “absolute” leading — meaning, an actual leading value, like 15 pt.

But Ari’s point about a leading that would change appropriately as the text gets larger is a good one. QuarkXPress has a % leading feature, which is kind of like Auto. But in XPress, leading is always the same throughout the paragraph. (You can change that in ID, though.)

More on that here: https://creativepro.com/reigning-in-rogue-leading.php