Bulleted lines: Gap between bullets and left margin

[quoz]

See attached, where the red arrow is pointing at a gap. I simply cannot get these bullets to align with the left side of the text box. Using Adobe Futura PT from the online collection, in Adobe InDesign 2023 on Mac OS. No paragraph style in use as this is a simple one-page document. 

Only some fonts seem to do this, but the end customer wants me to "fix this" and I can't change fonts.  Thanks.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

The spacing should be a left indent to the starting point of your text and a negative first line of the same value, as you have.

I can't for the life of me think of anything else that would cause that extra indent, UNLESS you have an inner margin defined on that text box and/or a nonzero margin set on the other text.

Does selecting another bullet (perhaps with a correcting character style applied) change things?

[quoz]

Thanks, James Gifford. It's actually all one text box... If I understand what you mean by "selecting another bullet"... if I choose an Asterisk it does align to the left. So it must be a characteristic of the bullet itself?

[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

Select another bullet character, from that list or from any other font. You can apply a character style to it to "correct" its size, positioning, etc. That bullet glyph may be faulty or bugged somehow.

"All one text box" would be irrelevant if the other text is shifted around. I am assuming the text box has zero inner margins, and the text styles above have no left spacing defined.

[quoz]

Spot on. I found a bullet in an Avenir font that moved to the left but was a bit too big. I had to create a character style to size it down--couldn't find any other way? Needing to create a character style in order to make it smaller seems like a lot of hassle, BUT I have a visual solution that will pass. Thanks!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

It's a perfectly valid, somewhat advanced technique — with or without a little refinement, there's no reason you can't use it all the way to press. Even the fussiest client isn't going to notice or care about a substituted bullet character. Using an applied character style lets you tweak it, as well — size, color, baseline shift to center it vertically, etc. I almost never use a default bullet for these reasons.

You might go back to the base font and explore the glyph set to see if there's a better standard bullet character there. The spacing problem indicates to me that maybe one of the alternate "dot" characters might have been selected, by default or otherwise, as that space problem is very unusual. You might be able to simplify it if you feel that's necessary.

[quoz]

Thank you, I did poke around the original font, but it was actually the bullet already being used, and the "dot" choices were too small. Using a different font came closer and required less tweaking--just the size. All good! Learned something. Thanks so much!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Yes, being able to tweak and style bullets is a nice feature of ID and worth exploring.

Back to the start, though, I can't think of a single reason you should have had that spacing problem unless the font itself is corrupted or has faulty kerning/spacing data. Is it a standard font? Have you tried pulling the same bullet character from other weights/faces of the same font?

[quoz]

Futura PT is actually from the Adobe online font library... so I would hope it isn't corrupt for faulty. Poor design, perhaps...

The weight/face chosen does not change the alignment.

[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

It looks as if Futura, as a set, has this odd spacing. I wonder why no one's ever noticed/noted it. On the third hand, though, it's not too common to have bullets right on the left margin, so perhaps no one ever set up the specific combination that reveals it.

Or, getting that small indent, accepted it without thinking as an esthetic grace note.

[quoz]

I accepted it. Somone else didn't!  🙂

In my opinion, there shouldn't be any indent unless an indent is set.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

No, there's no question it's a bug in the font defintion; not an indent, per se as just poor font spacing/kerning data. Why as old and widely used a font as Futura has it, and why there doesn't seem to be any other complaint or note of it... bizarre.