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Guidelines for Stylesheet Creation

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    • #96767
      Justin Sligh
      Member

      Im working on guidelines for stylesheet creation. Anyone have comments/suggestions?

      1. Each type of stylesheet must be saved within a Style Group

      2. A consistent format for style names should be established

      3. No local formatting. All content should be styled

      4. Parent Styles
      a. Paragraph Styles shall not be based on the [Basic Paragraph]
      b. Object Styles shall not be based on the [Basic Graphics Frame] or [Basic Text Frame]
      c. A Default Style must be created for Paragraph and Object Styles.
      d. Make a good effort to limit the Parent/Child styles to three (3) tiers, the default style being Tier I

      5. Paragraph Styles
      a. Align to Grid shall be set to “None” in all Paragraph Styles
      b. Leading shall be set on all Paragraph Styles (i.e. no auto leading)
      c. Language shall be set to “English: USA” in all Paragraph Styles
      d. GREP Styles
      i. GREP Styles may be used sparingly
      ii. A description of the regular expression shall be included in the primary master page
      iii. The following GREP Styles shall be applied to the Default Paragraph Style. We are open to suggestions for alternatives:
      1. Placeholder INSERT: The regular expression is:
      INSERT(\(.+?\))|INSERT
      The Character Style “needs attention” sets the font color to magenta and Overprint Fill turned on (for preflight)
      2. No Break on dollar values and measurements: The regular expression is:
      \d+ (SF|sq\. Ft\.)
      The Character Style “no break”
      e. Span/Split Columns may be used sparingly
      f. Export Tagging for PDF should be specified (e.g., p, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, caption)
      g. Next Style
      i. Headings and subheadings should include the Next Style for the primary paragraph style
      ii. Looping styles should be used for lists of projects with second or third line details

      6. Object Styles
      a. Text Frame Auto Size Options can be used sparingly

    • #96771

      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.

    • #96772

      Forgot to add: Base master pages on another whenever you can. It saves a lot of time when the publishers decides the trim size has changed and there is no need to change 20 different master pages. And make master pages for everything whenever possible.

    • #96774
      Justin Sligh
      Member

      Dwayne,

      These are excellent suggestions. I thank you.

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