Participant

Answered

How to automatically prevent Widows/Orphans in InDesign

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
February 28, 2013
5 replies
82648 views

Hi,

I constantly create multi-languaged leaflets within InDesign CS5 and the one thing I often find is that I constantly have to revisit the entire document to prevent widows (or orphans - whatever you call them) at the end of a paragraph.

Is there a way to setup within my paragraph style to prevent, lets say, anything less then 10 characters at the end of the paragraph?

I am aware of using the White-Space non break command, but the amount of text I have to visit I wondered if it could be setup in the first instance and prevent widows appearing at the end of a paragraph.

Thanks for taking the time to read

Steve

Correct answer Peter Spier

This comes up from time to time, and usually sparks a discussion about why it might not be adviseable, but I'll dispense with that for now and say that you can create a character style that applies No Break, then use a GREP style to apply it to the last n characters in a paragraph in the GREP Styles section of your Paragraph Style definition. The expression .{n}$ should work, where n = the number of characters you want to keep from breaking.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

I prefer the method that adds the GREP style into the paragraph style. I usually add it into the main Body style so all my derivative, based-on styles pick it up. You just have to change it based on the font size and column width once, rather than remembering to do the find/change.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Peter Kahrel

Community Expert

The problem with GREP styles is that they can slow down a document. Every time a story recomposes -- a character is inserted (or deleted), a float is placed or moved, in index marker is added, etc. -- all GREP styles execute. That can cause delays.

In addition, a GREP style that keeps a certain number of characters together always pulls characters from the paragraph's penultimate line to the last one. But tightening a paragraph a bit so that the short last line is removed often leads to a better result.

P.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

"Slow down" is a relative term. With my system and my documents (that I use it on), I haven't noticed much difference.

Peter K.--question: does ID recompose every paragraph in a story or just the edited* paragraphs?

*Anything causing rewrap, such as edited by user, change in column width, or affected by text wrap upon reflow.

If the former, it would seem a colossal waste of computing resources.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Peter Kahrel

Community Expert

> Is there a way to find the only the space before the last word of the paragraph?

\s(?=[^\s]+$)

This one matches only the space before the last word in a paragraph.

P.

Shlomit Heymann

Inspiring

Thank you so much!

L

Laubender

Community Expert

"…Is there a way to apply a NOBREAK character style without removing a style already applied?"

Hi Matthew,

basically no, if you try this "by hand".

BUT:

It's different if you apply the two character styles with two GREP Styles using a paragraph style.

Or if you apply the "Bold" character style "by hand" and the "No Break" character style through a GREP Style like Peter Kahrel suggested.

IMPORTANT:

There must be no entry for font style in the "No Break" character style.

There must be no entry for No Break in the "Bold" character style.

No entry with a check box means this state: [-] .

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Peter Spier

Correct answer

Community Expert

This comes up from time to time, and usually sparks a discussion about why it might not be adviseable, but I'll dispense with that for now and say that you can create a character style that applies No Break, then use a GREP style to apply it to the last n characters in a paragraph in the GREP Styles section of your Paragraph Style definition. The expression .{n}$ should work, where n = the number of characters you want to keep from breaking.

S

shalanah

Participant

I created a grep that assigns a NOBREAK character style the last word of every paragraph: (\s\w+.?)$

This should apply the NOBREAK character style to...

a space (\s)

+ word (\w+)

+ optional punctuation (.?) - really any character

at the end of every paragraph ($)

I think my parenthesis are actually optional as well, and I'm sure I could get more specific with the punctuation part too but this seems to the the trick for me.

HBurrows

Participant

I searched for an answer to this question, and I found these. I am not following how to create a GREP style. Can someone walk me through that process either by clear instructions or screen shots? I tried a few different things, but I must not be fully comprehending how to do this. TIA

Peter Kahrel

Community Expert

To prevent last lines shorter than 10 characters, run this Grep query:

Find what: .{10}$

Change to: <leave empty>

Change format: No Break

Or you can do this as a Grep style.

Widow and orphan prevention is set in the paragraph style, see Keep Options.

Peter

B

BlueFunk74Author

Participant

Thats exactly it! Thanks ever so much Peter!

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