Hey Andy

I always refer to widows as the last line of a paragraph at the top of the page. And an orphan as the last word of a paragraph on it’s own line. However, if it’s more than 4 characters (excluding punctuation), then it’s fine. We normally try for a whole word down (and a few publishers want a full word down, but will allow it to be hyphenated if it’s a very long word).

I looked at your links, and:

1) We always require a minimum of two text lines at the top of the page. The last line of a paragraph is not acceptable at the top of the page. It has to be at least two lines.

2) We allow the first line of a paragraph to end at the bottom of the page (I believe it’s the second link you provided where they refer to it as a widow). We allow it, and so do most publishers (at least with the ones we work with).

With that being said, sometimes you get an old-time editor or proof reader who doesn’t like those things, and they will mark them as PEs (printer errors). They aren’t, as the publishers allow them, but they sometimes get marked when 1st pass is sent back to us for corrections. We cross them off and ignore. We do check with the publisher first, however.

And although you didn’t ask, I will say that we always require two lines of text above and below text elements such as space breaks, extracts, bulleted lists, verse/prose, numbered lists, etc. And two lines of text above and below any element that has space above and below it. We pretty much go by the rule of “two,” except when it comes to the first line of a paragraph ending at the bottom of the page. That is when it’s regular text. LIke I said, if there is space above it, then it’s two.

Sorry for rambling. In the case of the second link, we don’t consider what they termed a widow as unacceptable.

Also–in book pagination, we are allowed to either go one line short or one line long on spreads to avoid bad breaks (this depends upon the foot margin and the page count wanted). So to avoid the last line of a paragraph falling at the top of the page, we can run the spreads either a line short or a line long. Normally, you can’t have three spreads in a row that are short or long, and you can’t mix and match. It’s either shorts or longs. But normally, we would try to make or lose a line in the text to avoid running shorts or longs.

And, of course, that’s why we use the “keep together” option in the paragraph style sheets. We normally use 1 and 2 (one at bottom and 2 at the top). Some designers refuse to use that feature, which makes no sense to me. By using it, InDesign will show you the bad breaks.

Ditto what Anne-Marie said.

I gotta admit it drives me crazy when folks delete the space between words and put in the soft return. At our company we always keep the space in there and put the soft return AFTER the space to avoid these issues.

And it’s even more complicated when they use a soft return after a hard hyphen. When that happens–you’re pretty much screwed as you can’t automatically fix those. You have to determine it individually. That is a pain in the ass.

I always search for space + soft return and replace with a space.

Then, I search for any letter + soft return, and replace with a color not used in the job (let’s say “red” for this example).

Then I search on the hyphen + soft return and waste an hour or so determing if it’s a real had hyphen or if it should be removed.

Then I search and replace a red soft return with a space and back to black.

I know it sounds weird–but you can do a lot of stuff with searching and replacing by using a color in the search and find replace fields. You’d be amazed at what you can do.

At our company we try to avoid soft returns whenever possible. We use the “no break” feature and actually use a character style that only does that.

Andy–to be honest–you are overthinking this.

Text frame against the edges of the spine is fine. It’s no big deal if you are off half a point or something.

How are you trying to get perfectly aligned columns? Do you have the text box set for “vertical justification”? If so, InDesign will *try* to do what it can, but let’s say there is a bad page break. One column has 40 lines in it, and the other now only has 38 in it. InDesign will add leading to that short column to make them bottom align. I keep away from using that feature, as many book publishers no longer allow “feathering.”

In regards to your second question–you can control the text wrap. Go to your text wrap palette and you can adjust it from there. You can add space on any one of the four sides, or you can use negative space if there is too much. I’m not sure why you are getting extra space if you have it set for zero. Actually–if you don’t want a text wrap on it, just change the text wrap to none.

Which works great, so long as there isn’t any italic or bold in the copied material.

Normally, I take the word files of the inserts and run my macros on them, and then import the text so everything comes through (that’s if it’s a new paragraph or a replacement paragraph).

If it’s a sentence or word, we usually just retype it or make the correction. It’s a lot faster to correct a word with a typo than to copy and paste it in.

But if’s lines of type, then like you said Eugene, copy and paste as text only, and format as needed so far as italic and bold.

I don’t think there is, but I hope there is a way to do it. There are several buttons I’d love to remove from the tool palette, especially the “page tool,” because I’m always clicking it by mistake. I know there are ways to remove items from the menu list, but I don’t think there is for the palette.

Glad to help, Andy. However–I just noticed there was a typo in my first post to you.

I meant to say we never use “lock to baseline grid,” NOT we never use baseline grid.

We always use baseline grid, but we never lock it.