formatting issue

[rehana36276218]

hi guys  in indesign i make these columns and you can see the headings in white where i am pointing in red is not perfectly line , i dont want to use base line shift manually becuase its not professional approach , what its going wrong if any body can help..

thanks in advance

[jmendesign]

Did you see if there was any space after the character applied to these cells?

[jmendesign]

Table > Cell Options > Text > Cell Insets

[jmendesign]

If you are not using tables then the text should be aligned to the grid. As the first entry with the word Specifications is composed in a larger body, you will have to indicate in the paragraph styles that it does not align to the grid and the body text paragraph style to align to all lines.

[Peter Kahrel]

>  i dont want to use base line shift manually becuase its not professional approach

Well, adding all those returns isn't exactly professional.

[davidt12412601]

As a quick fix, without addressing other issues, setting the Specifications paragraph to span all columns may help. That is, if this is a multicolumn text frame with guides, and not a table.

[Barb Binder]

Hi @rehana36276218:

Is there any reason not to use a table here? Cells have vertical alignment controls, so you can set your white heads to align bottom, and your blue paragraphs to align top, cell insets for spacing so that they don't actually touch each other, and merge cells under Packaging Details.

~Barb

[Joel Cherney]

Well, the answer to your question "what is going wrong" is that you've used empty paragraphs to position text. The other suggestions made in this thread are very good suggestions - this would have been a great time to use a table. If you don't want to rebuild your table from the ground up, then @davidt12412601 's baseline grid suggestion would get it to look right without needing you to rebuild the whole thing.

But the why here is simple: in your 2nd through 4th columns, you've used three empty paragraphs to align your content. In the 1st column, it's two empty paragraphs and the word "Specifications." The leading on "Specifications" is greater than that of your empty paragraphs; it's just taller. It pushes the rest of the "Product" content down a few points. If you made the first empty paragraph of each of columns 2 through 4 have the same leading as the word "Specifications" then everything should line up. 

I'm not suggesting that solution, mind you. It's quick and dirty. There aren't many good answers to @Barb Binder 's question "Is there any reason not use a table here?"  besides "Okay, okay, I'll go rebuild it with a table." That would give you the best control of the layout. But if it's only going to print, and it's not going to be revised, and it was due to your client yesterday... well, you might choose the quick-and-dirty solution that I am absolutely not suggesting. 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Joel Cherney

It would be enough to set leading for the "Specifications" EXACTLY the same as the rest of the text.