On Spaces and Soft returns in TOC

Question

I have set up a 2-line nested paragraph style. The first line ends with a colon followed by a space and soft return and goes on to the second line. The style works fine.

When I run the ID 'remove trailing spaces' in Search, it will delete the space before the soft return, creating no space between the colon on the first line and the first word on the second line. That does not work when pulling text for a TOC because the space is missing after the colon.

Is there any workaround that I can do to prevent the removal of the space before the soft return other than not searching for and removing 'trailing white spaces' in the document?

Many thanks!

James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted Answer

Long TOC entries and ones with breaks in them are problematic in TOCs.

The most universal solution I know of is to use hard (nonbreaking) spaces in the latter portion of the header string so that ID breaks the whole word group to the next line, with no need for a soft return.

There are various right-indent, right-indent tabs and other tools to control line wrap in TOCs but in most cases variations in heading/TOC element length make them erratic.

(Also a good example of why soft returns should really be avoided at all costs. Or all but the highest cost. They just don't play well with style adjustments and text re-use like this.)

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