I recently had to come up with a solution for a problem in a textbook’s table of contents where lesson numbers and titles were in separate paragraphs throughout the book
but in the table of contents, both items had to be on the same line.
I know you can achieve something like this example with numbered paragraphs, where the “Lesson ” is just part of the numbering style. But there are other situations where because of the content of the TOC entry, the numbering scheme, or the formatting requirements, you would need a different solution.
So I said to myself, “Self, why don’t we set up the TOC style to format the paragraphs for each lesson title with a left indent and zero leading? That way, it will just look like the lesson numbers and titles are all in the same paragraph.”
My self liked this very much, and thus, the zero leading solution was born.
In the Table of Contents dialog box, I set up the lesson number entries without page numbers.
And made sure that the entry paragraph style had no space after.
The lesson titles did get page numbers.
And they were set in a paragraph style with zero leading and zero space before.
This made the lesson titles move up to exactly the same line as the lesson numbers.
Then to fix the overlapping text, I added a left indent to the lesson titles.
With Hidden Characters visible, you can see the subterfuge.
But otherwise, the TOC looks exactly as I need it to.
One more thing: It’s usually not a great idea to edit the text in a table of contents since your edits will be wiped out if you update the TOC. But if you do have a reason to edit the TOC, the zero leading solution can make it tricky to select the text you want. Happily, the Story Editor solves this problem because its raison d’être is to disregard formatting like leading.
This article was last modified on December 21, 2021
This article was first published on January 16, 2012
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