Expert: Glen Demers - 4/14/2011

Question
QUESTION: Hello,

I work for a publishing company that is currently making the switch from Framemaker to InDesign. We have had many hurdles to overcome in this process, and I have tried to approach this particular problem from all different angles to no avail.

For a journal we publish every month, we need to create a template which allows us to place headings in the document's margins when we import text. We have a workaround in place that involves altering the baseline of the heading so that it is flush with the first line of the story and also moves with the text, but I keep thinking: what would an InDesign expert do with this?

In sum, it needs to look like this and needs to be easily applied to all headings in the story:


       ...story story story story story.

HEADING Story story story story story story
       story story story story story story
       story story story story story story.
       story story...

Many thanks!

ANSWER: Hi Jessica,

I would accomplish this by using styles. I would set up the page with story frames extending into the margins and create an indent for basic text paragraph style. For paragraphs with a heading I would have the same indent, for example, .5", then I would make the first line indent -.5"

I would then have a Character Style that I could apply to the Heading text to format it.

Also, look into using the Find/Change feature. By leaving the find what and change to boxes blank you can find and replace styles using the find format box at the bottom of the Find/Change dialog box.

Hope this helps,
Glen Demers
Prepress Technician, Best Printing Online
www.bestprintingonline.com

For more InDesign tips please visit our help pages here: http://www.bestprintingonline.com/indesign.htm

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Glen,

Thank you for your reply, and apologies that my 'example' didn't display as I wanted to.

To clarify, I need the heading to be completely set apart from the lines of body text. In other words, it needs to have the effect of looking like a single word in a right-aligned column next to a paragraph in a left-aligned column. I'm not sure I can achieve this my using the method you described because, if I'm not mistaken, the first-line margin settings do not take into account the number of characters in the heading - i.e. a shorter heading would drag the first line of paragraph text into the 'headings' space.

I guess I'm just looking for a feature that Framemaker had which allowed you to link an object to a piece of text. Any thoughts?

Many thanks,
Jessica

Answer
Jessica,

You could follow the heading with a tab set to the normal margin.

The other way to do it would be to drag out a small story frame in the margin and place your text in it. Shorten the frame down to just the heading and flow the rest of the text into a normal text frame. This would keep the heading and text linked but would result in many text frames. You can insert graphic objects into text so that they flow but this leaves you the same formatting issues.

I'm sorry, but I'm not at all familiar with Framemaker so I can only suggest flowing text into a lot of small text frames and see if you can make it work by manipulating the frame sizes.

Best of luck,
Glen Demers
Prepress Technician, Best Printing Online
www.bestprintingonline.com

For more InDesign tips please visit our help pages here: http://www.bestprintingonline.com/indesign.htm