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Dotted underline spacing?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
September 2, 2018
4 replies
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I received a file that I need to adjust. It looks like the used the underline tool and changed the options to Dots. I've tried recreating it, but I don't see a way to adjust the spacing between the dots.

Thanks in advance

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Correct answer rob day

but I don't see a way to adjust the spacing between the dots.

If you are using a tab leader the leader spacing will respond to tracking. Select the tab in the text (not the icon in the panel) and change its Tracking in the character panel:

If you choose to apply a dotted underline to the tab character, you can make a custom stroke style that adjusts the spacing. Here I've made a new dotted stroke style named Spread Dots with the Pattern Length increased and used that style in the Underline Options for the tab:

Also there is a subtle difference in tab leaders vs. dotted underlines. Assuming the tracking is consistent, tab leaders align vertically and there can be some variance in the space before and after the tab leaders. With underlines you can make the space before and after uniform, but the dots wont line up vertically:

AnneMarie Concepcion

Community Expert

Or they might have underlined a space run, as you suggest. Turning on Hidden Characters in Normal view would reveal that.

Again there is no way to change the space in between the dots in the stroke type they chose for the Underline. You can change the thickness of the stroke, which will change the size of the dots and their spacing.

For both the anchored stroke and the underline stroke, another option would be to create a custom stroke style (Stroke panel menu > Stroke styles > New) with dots that are closer together. But that's a lot of work.

Better option is to use Tabs with a Leader dot and a space. Then you can use Tracking on the tab character to increase/decrease the spacing of the dots without affecting the size of the dots. You can make a character style that does that tracking for you and apply it to the tabs, or if you're very clever, make a nested style or grep style for the paragraph that applies that tracking character style on the tab automatically.

AM

AnneMarie Concepcion

Community Expert

It's possible they anchored a dotted stroke in the sentence. Hard to tell from the screen shot though. (If you switch to Normal view and turn on Show Hidden Characters and Show Frame Edges, that'd tell us more.)

Can you click on the dotted rule with the Selection tool and move it around (just up and down)? If so, that's what they did. Here you can see the anchor character appear on the rule because I selected it.

If that's the case, you can't change space between the dots. You can select the anchored stroke and Scale it, but that would scale both the width and height. OTOH maybe that'll do the trick.

AM

hammer0909

Community Expert

For complete control over these spaces, I use a tab to define the alignment of the text after the tab. On that tab stop in the tabs panel, type one period to create the dot leader effect. Now create a paragraph style to format that text. Now create a character style with a tracking value applied and apply that character style to the tab using a nested style or GREP style in the paragraph style that you created. Now you can adjust that character style to a very granular level to control the spacing of the dots in the dot leader.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi edit_monster:

The correct way to do this is with tabs. After you select the tab arrow over the ruler, you can control the spacing between the leader dots by adding/removing spaces in the Leader text box.

But there are other ways one could do this if they didn't know how to properly set tabs. Start with Type > Show Hidden Characters. Is there a tab character on the line? (It's the >> symbol). If not, can you share that page on dropbox and we can take a look? Once we see how this was set up, we can give you a quick answer.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

E

edit_monsterAuthor

Participant

Ok, we're getting closer. Can I affect the existing tab length? When I highlight it, or put the cursor in front or behind the dots, I don't see any parameters pop up in the Tabs box. I'm a noob, so forgive me if this is rudimentary stuff.

rob day

Correct answer

Community Expert

but I don't see a way to adjust the spacing between the dots.

If you are using a tab leader the leader spacing will respond to tracking. Select the tab in the text (not the icon in the panel) and change its Tracking in the character panel:

If you choose to apply a dotted underline to the tab character, you can make a custom stroke style that adjusts the spacing. Here I've made a new dotted stroke style named Spread Dots with the Pattern Length increased and used that style in the Underline Options for the tab:

Also there is a subtle difference in tab leaders vs. dotted underlines. Assuming the tracking is consistent, tab leaders align vertically and there can be some variance in the space before and after the tab leaders. With underlines you can make the space before and after uniform, but the dots wont line up vertically:

Steve Werner

Community Expert

If you look in the Tabs panel for the paragraph, and you click on the tab that sets the Leader, it may be set as a period and a space, instead of just a period.