InDesign GREP Style Not Applying Correctly to Italic Text

Question

I apply a grep style to the letter ā which appears before the symbol ʾ

The grep style applies negative tracking of 100 to the letter ā.

However it also applies the tracking to all instance of the combination in italics which appears too squashed.

I don’t want this grep style applied when it is italic.

Is there a way to apply the above grep style only to the combination of letters that are not italic and only regular?

I have tried to manually override but that doesn’t work.

Eugene Tyson · Answer

Wrap your italic text in a separate character style (e.g., Italic) and leave the rest as normal. Then your GREP style that applies ā(?=ʾ) with negative tracking will only affect non-italic text, because InDesign GREP styles shouldn’t override existing character styles.

Italic text > Italic Character Style

GREP style > applies -100 tracking to āʾ only for regular text

I can’t remember what order the styles follows - some won’t override other styles.
So if you find the GREP style is not behaving, try using a Nested Style along with the Grep Style

You might need to switch the order - but the main idea is to apply a regular text style and an italic text style using different applications like Grep Style and Nested Style ((or a regular character style).

Once you figure out the order it will be easy to be implement.

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