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.
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