how to make a numbered list

Hi David and Peter,

Use Auto-num is a good and simple idea! …

https://snipboard.io/5Ougam.jpg

1/ Use Auto-num in the current para style “xxx” [“NEW! “], not in the TOC para style “xxx_TOC”, and in the TOC Settings don’t forget to choose “Include Full Paragraph” in the “Numbered Paragraphs dropllist.

2/ If not useful, make the “xxx” para style auto-num not visible.

3/ in the “xxx_TOC” para style, include 2 Grep Styles:

a) NEW!(?!~j) + “Invisible” Char Style

b) NEW!~j + “Blue” Char Style

Now just go to the current text and add a “non-joiner” char at the beginning of each “NEW!” recipe! … And update the TOC! ;-)

(^/) The Jedi

Hi Tiffany

I see where you are coming from, and no Indesign only does levels for numbered lists as you say.

The way I could see this working if your bullets are normally introduced by a body paragraph is:
– make sure Body and most paragraph styles use “Space before” rather than “Space after” for regular spacing
– your preceding text should be defined to ‘keep with next’ so you would create a variant style such as ‘Body-KeepNext’ based on ‘Body’ but with the keep option set
– then you only need a single para style for each bullet level with no spacing before or after, and put the “space before” for the whole list on the preceding body para (i.e. add space after to Body-KeepNext).

This does not help with the “space after” your list, however. I personally wouldn’t put additional spacing after a bulleted list, it would take the normal ‘space before’ from whatever style comes next. However if your use case needs more than normal spacing then the above method would require you to have another Body variant with added ‘space before’ to suit. And just to add, if your preceding paragraph might be anything other than the Body-KeepNext style (e.g. and indented body style) then you’re back in the situation of creating lots of style variants.

Another potential solution if your objective is purely to add space around a bulleted list is to have a ‘dummy paragraph’ before and after your lists with the ‘List intro’ style having ‘keep next’ and your ‘List outro’ having ‘keep previous’ set. You then have no spacing on your bullet styles and set very small font size/leading and add spacing on these dummies to achieve your outcome. This isn’t ideal for a number of reasons: you have empty paragraphs to look after; if you have dummy paragraphs set with a small font it can be difficult to see where they are; and if your dummy paragraph appears at the top of a text frame it can offset the list. So like with many of these problems it depends on the actual content and layouts you’re dealing with.

Not sure that helps!

Nick

I’ve seen this problem brilliantly solved by David Blatner: a numbered list, where you make the text invisible when you put it on the map, then use the Table of Contents feature to make your list on the left, thanks to the character style you use on the numbered list. You can use Mike Rankin’s hack using a dotted rule to make the circles on the numbered list: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L08nc-C7fbA

Hi Deborah
Hmmm. Interesting…

I think it’s possible using 3 paragraph styles:
1) Level 1 if not followed by a level 2 (such as 1. and 4. here)
2) Level 1 if followed by a level 2 (such as 2.a., 3.a. and 5.a)
3) Level 2 such as b. (or c., d…)

For 1) nothing special to mention.

For 2) set it as a level 1 numbered list + format 1,2,3… and manually enter “a.” in the list numbering:
^#.a.

Now set 3) as a level 2 numbered list + format a,b,c
At this stage, you should end up with something like this:

1.
2. a.
a.
3. a.
a.
4.
5.a.

Which is still not good enough, right?
Question is: how can you make 3) start at b, then c, d and so on.
Here comes the trick. Be aware it’s a tweak: I tested it on my CS6 version and it works, but I don’t know about CC versions…

Now, set 3) “Mode” = “Start at 2”
Before clicking OK, revert back to “Continue from Previous”.
“2” is now greyed out, but somehow, Indesign uses it as a starting point, while allowing you to make it continuous.

Hope that helps.
Vinny

View post on imgur.com

If it is only 40-some pages, create a series of linked text frames, from the back to the front. Create a numbered list paragraph style, and make the style in the linked frames this style. Then put in 40-odd carriage returns or something similar. It should number 1 to whatever in the order the boxes are linked. I think.

Actually, I think you could probably make this work with numbered lists instead of using the normal page numbers. See:
https://creativepro.com/use-numbered-lists-instead-of-auto-page-numbering.php

That’s a pretty good list, Justin. Some of those don’t apply to where I work. But they look good. I know that we (and many publishers) don’t use style groups. The main reason is because when we (and they ) import tagged text files. xTags and ID-tagged files aren’t smart enough to search within style group folders, so we keep all style sheets on the main level.

A few things you may be interested in:

1) If a chapter title, head, or runningheads (or anything) has to be in ALL CAPS, make them all caps, and don’t just use the “K” in the palette. We’ve had issues with some fonts where they will appear Upper/Lower Case (and weirdly-spaced) in the eBook. By making them actually all caps, there is no problem.

2) Use the keep together options in the paragraph styles:
a) For body text use 1 for start, and 2 for end.
b) For elements with space above it (i.e., extracts, bulleted lists, numbered lists, etc.) make it 2 and 2
c) For heads (ie., HA, HB, etc.) be sure to select “keep with” and select 2 lines and also change keep with to all lines in the paragraph.

3) Set the grid for the leading of the job to be sure everything aligns at top and bottom of the page). Also, if your your job is 14 point leading, and you need a line space above, use 14 points above (not 10 or 12). Absolute leading.

4) Use a nobreak character style whenever you can, instead of using soft returns. Soft returns should only be used as a last resort (i.e., practically never) within text. For heads or the copyright page, it’s acceptable. Be sure to create “nobreak italic” “nobreakbold” as needed.

5) Do not allow hyphenation for chapter titles, heads, part titles, etc. If you have a style you don’t want to hyphenate, make sure to turn off hyphenation.

6) For text hyphenation, in book publishing no more than two hyphens in a row are allowed, and a minimum of 3 character down. I usually set mine 6, 3, 3, 2. Depending upon the client I may allow the last word to hyphenate or not.

7) All art goes on a separate layer (unless it’s anchored—which is self-explanatory so far as anchored art).

8) All elements must use space above or below. No extra hard returns allowed for space above/below (except for spacebreaks—where the hard return for that should be centered).

9) To sink heads at the top of a page, there is no need for a separate master page or manually moving the top of the text box down. Use a one point rule (color none), and select keep in frame. Adjust until it everything aligns properly.

10) Don’t use next column or next page characters/keystroke. The style should indicate what should start a new page or column.

11) Local formatting allowed for kerning/tracking to avoid a bad break. Also allowed for things like fractions. Or to tell a paragraph to start in the next column.

12) Don’t go crazy with style sheets. There is no need for a separate style sheet for the a “prologue” text paragraph and a regular text paragraph. Or an “introduction” text paragraph and a regular text paragraph. No need for an extra half-dozen style sheets that do the same exact thing as the regular text style.

13) Very important—do not manually hyphenate a word and use a soft return to make a line break. In fact—don’t use soft returns at all, unless it’s an emergency (such as in notes sections when you’ve wasted 10 minutes to get the paragraph to break right because of the stupid URL).

That’s my input for now.

Oh—Do a search and replace for any characte/any character/apostrophe/any character and replace with a no break (not the character style). ID still insists on allowing something like er’s to start a line.