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Participant
August 23, 2022
Answered

Using InDesign Style can cause the wrong bullet to be displayed.

  • August 23, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 392 views

Using InDesign 17.3 under macOS 12.5.1

 

When an InDesign style forces text to be in ALL CAPS, a custom bullet based on a lowercase letter is also changing to the capital letter equivalent. Changing the case of the text should never change the case of the bullet set in a style. 

 

To reproduce

 

1. Start a new InDesign document

2. Create a text box and enter "test"

3. Create a new paragraph style called "Bullet"

4. Go to the Bullets and Numbering section of the style and change the List Type to "Bullets"

5. Click "Add" 

6. Using a normal text font, add the symbol "a" (lowercase a) as a bullet. Click OK.

7. Select your new "a" bullet for the "Bullet Character"

8. Click OK. Note the correct appearance of the example.

9. Double click the "Bullet" style to edit. 

10. Open Basic Character Formats and change "Case" to "All Caps"

11. Click OK. 

12. Note that your text has correctly changed from "test" to "TEST". Note also, however, that your bullet has changed from "a" to "A". This should not happen, especially when the bullet is a symbol font, which causes the wrong symbol to be shown. 

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Willi Adelberger

Create a Character Style for the bullet. 
Go to the paragraph style definition and select this style for the bullet. 

That is why bullets should always have a style definition. If the first word is styled differently and the bullet has no character style, it will inherit the appearane of the first glyph. 

3 replies

Participant
August 27, 2022

I know how it works, and I know about creating a style for the bullet, but this is a bug, plain and simple. A bullet should not change its case once defined. 

Willi Adelberger
Community Expert
Willi AdelbergerCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
August 24, 2022

Create a Character Style for the bullet. 
Go to the paragraph style definition and select this style for the bullet. 

That is why bullets should always have a style definition. If the first word is styled differently and the bullet has no character style, it will inherit the appearane of the first glyph. 

Barb Binder
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 24, 2022

Hi @SophieSkyPicone:

 

That's just how InDesign works. The bullet picks up the formatting from the first character of the paragraph. Choosing All Caps is formatting so it picks up the change, but using the Change Case command won't do this—it replaces the character so it doesn't impact the bullet. 

 

We can explain how InDesign works on this forum, but we can't fix it. You can file a feature request here: https://indesign.uservoice.com

 

~Barb

 

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training