How can I find lines that naturally break?

[adtypeanddesign]

Using InDesign CC 2017 for Mac. I'm working on a membership directory with lots of data that has to be set flush left with no hyphenated words. I need to find all lines that have a natural break between words so I can bump the correct data to the next line with a soft return. Find/change does not recognize this. Anyone out there face this dilemma as well?

[BobLevine]

I’m not sure what you’re trying to achieve but the idea of using soft returns in every paragraph is very bad practice. Perhaps some screenshots would help us offer some better workflow choices.

[SJRiegel]

Are you saying that you want to prevent hypenation? If so, that can be done with a setting in your paragraph style

[adtypeanddesign]

To Bob and SJ,

The data is not hyphenated - it's a break between words. I'm attaching a screen shot as an example.

Each member's name/address/city/state/phone number/e-mail address data has a soft return at the end of each line except for the last line. I've added spacing below so member entries have a little bit of separation.

Note the data 1973 C 6CD49 SDV that is highlighted in yellow. I need to be able to quickly spot these kinds of breaks and track the text tighter so SDV goes back to the end of the previous line. Thank you in advance.

[BobLevine]

This could all be fixed by using proper line breaks and paragraph styles. I can't think of anyway to check this without a script.

You might want to pop over to the scripting forum for a possible solution there.

[winterm]

Alternatively, maybe it makes sense to use some regex, like \d{4}\s\u\s\w{5}\s\u{3} and apply to it Character style with Nobreak enabled?

[Srishti Bali]

Hi adtypeanddesign,

I would like to know if the steps suggested above worked for you, or the issue still persists.

Kindly update the discussion if you need further assistance with it.

Thanks,

Srishti

[adtypeanddesign · Accepted solution]

I tried the solution from winterm and it did not work. In next year’s book, the letter C will not be part of the data, so no lines will be susceptible to breaking. Thank you.

[winterm]

adtypeanddesign  wrote

I tried the solution from winterm and it did not work.

Very interesting. Won't you mind to be a bit more specific on this? Regex offered works on sequences which meet this pattern:

four digits - space - upper case letter - space - five characters (letters or digits) - space - three upper case letters.

That said, like your provided sample: 1973 C 6CD49 SDV

Include this in your Para style, set to apply Char style with nobreak enabled.

What's wrong here?

[adtypeanddesign]

Hello winterm,

The sample data I supplied is not all the same length. The data refers to Cadillacs, and the body style number was really long in the 1950s, got shorter in the 1970s as you saw in the sample, and it's even shorter today. So, the lines I'm dealing with do not all have the same number of characters.

At least dropping the C solves a lot of the problem. I sure appreciate everyone's help!

[winterm]

Well, I still believe we would able to cover those variations with some GREP code, if you'd bother to show as a bigger picture.

OK, whatever. Case closed.