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InDesign is using minus symbol instead of hyphens

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    • March 31, 2022 at 8:10 am #14362466
      Cecilia Finney
      Participant

      Hello,

      I am working on a book, the sidebars use Trade Gothic Next LT Pro. The symbol InDesign is using for hyphens is a MINUS symbol, not a hyphen. I cannot figure out a way to change it. (Of course, GLYPH search and replace works to replace minus symbols for an actual hyphen — except for the ones breaking a word at the END of a line — it skips over those and I cannot select them by themselves.) It must be a setting somewhere. Any suggestions?

      Thank you

    • March 31, 2022 at 9:04 am #14362475
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      Are you talking about hyphens that you type in a text frame? Or are you talking about something InDesign inserts for you (such as when making an index)?

    • March 31, 2022 at 9:04 am #14362476
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      Are you talking about hyphens that you type in a text frame? Or are you talking about something InDesign inserts for you (such as when making an index)?

    • March 31, 2022 at 11:02 am #14362527
      Cecilia Finney
      Participant

      I’m referring to hyphens that I type into a text frame (“middle-of-the-road” for example) but also hyphens that are automatically generated when a word is broken — hyphenated — at the end of a line.

    • March 31, 2022 at 11:11 am #14362529
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      Oh. InDesign is using whatever the character is for the hyphen in the font. I don’t think there is any way to replace that character with another one.
      You could use a GREP Style to apply a character style that has a different width to all hypens. (I write about how to do that with em dashes here: https://creativepro.com/5-cool-things-you-can-do-with-grep-styles/ )
      But that won’t apply to hyphens inside words that are being broken. Hm.

    • March 31, 2022 at 11:14 am #14362537
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      My guess is that the only solution would be to use a font editor to create a custom font that has a hyphen of a different width.

    • March 31, 2022 at 11:47 am #14362553
      Cecilia Finney
      Participant

      To clarify, this font DOES have the right kind of hyphen glyph but InDesign isn’t using it — it’s choosing to use the minus sign glyph instead.

      I can do a GLYPH search for the minus signs and replace them with the correct glyph for a hyphen. But this does not work for the automatically generated hyphens, those that break a word at the end of a line.

      I discovered that if I uncheck the use of Open Type fractions in this paragraph style, I get the normal hyphen. I have no idea why.

    • March 31, 2022 at 3:09 pm #14362571
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      WOW! That’s amazing about the Fraction feature affecting that. But yeah, you don’t want that feature on for most of your text. All your numbers and stuff would get messed up. That should be off. (And then apply the Fraction opentype style just to the fractions that need to be affected.)

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