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Nedlaw
Legend
February 5, 2022
Answered

Style to add decorative bullets to a head

  • February 5, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 190 views

Hi. Using 17.1 under Win10 on a PC.

I am building page designs and styles to emulate an existing company document for which no one has access to the source files (possibly done in ID, but no one knows even that). Among several interesting head styles is this one:

 

 

The head is fully flush left and led by three widely spaced bullets. I have tried several methods to re-create this (without resorting to putting in an image before each head).

 

  • I have tried putting in the dots as a tab leader -- but that didn't seem to allow for them to be styled automatically or be elevated above the baseline.
  • I have tried creating a paragraph rule, increasing the right indent (to eliminate extraneous dots to the right), and then changing the offset to bring them into position above the baseline. This seemed to work... until I saw that setting the right indent on the rule page seemed to be compressing the text of the head (even though the right indent on Indents and Spacing was not increased).
  • I have tried creating a wide left paragraph border, but the left paragraph border wants to be vertical.
  • I have tried Drop Caps and Nested styles, but could not seem to achieve the correct effect with the dots.
  • I have tried Bullets and Numbering, but those controls don't seem to allow for more than one bullet. For example, I can control the text-after-tab, but not the text before the tab (only one bullet apparently allowed).

 

Perhaps putting a graphic in front of every head of this nature is the solution, but there are a lot of these heads in this document... and I'm unaware of a way to create a style that uses the same graphic in the same position as part of the style.

 

I would like a style-based solution, if possible, rather than a manual solution. I may have been close and just goofed it up in my typical ham-handed way. 🙂 This head will not go into the TOC. Maybe manually typing the dots and then elevating them manually above the baseline is the best solution...

 

As always, thanks to the community for any advice.

 

-j

 

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Nedlaw

Well, I found the solution a few minutes after posting.

  1. I found a bullet character in the font I was using.
  2. I created a character style called table-head-bullets. This style let me a) control the font from which the bullet was drawn and b) adjust the baseline of the bullet(s).
  3. I created a paragraph style called table-head.
  4. I copied the bullet character.
  5. In the paragraph style, on the tabs page, I pasted <bullet char><space><space><space>. I had used periods previously, but I didn't realize that I could paste in symbols, too. (Why not? Dunno.)
  6. I set the tab to an appropriate distance for the three bullet characters I wanted to precede the text of the head.
  7. At a paragraph marker, I typed <tab><head text> and I get three bullets:

It's not a perfect match for the old doc (corporate typographic changes altered the fonts) but it's close, and I can adjust.

 

You never know what you might figure out.

 

-j

1 reply

N
NedlawAuthorCorrect answer
Legend
February 5, 2022

Well, I found the solution a few minutes after posting.

  1. I found a bullet character in the font I was using.
  2. I created a character style called table-head-bullets. This style let me a) control the font from which the bullet was drawn and b) adjust the baseline of the bullet(s).
  3. I created a paragraph style called table-head.
  4. I copied the bullet character.
  5. In the paragraph style, on the tabs page, I pasted <bullet char><space><space><space>. I had used periods previously, but I didn't realize that I could paste in symbols, too. (Why not? Dunno.)
  6. I set the tab to an appropriate distance for the three bullet characters I wanted to precede the text of the head.
  7. At a paragraph marker, I typed <tab><head text> and I get three bullets:

It's not a perfect match for the old doc (corporate typographic changes altered the fonts) but it's close, and I can adjust.

 

You never know what you might figure out.

 

-j

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