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Hello,
I have some headings and paragraphs that I'd like to keep together, like this:
I've tried using drop caps, indenting the text and "unindenting" the first line with the header on it, plus a few other unsuccessful workarounds. So I'm hoping someone might have the answer - as you can hopefully guess from the screengrab above, I'd like to have the headers right-aligned, to the left of each paragraph, but lined up properly with the first line. I know I could fudge it manually with a lot of leading/space before/after adjustments, but obviously that would all be useless if the body text was then edited. Is there a simpler way?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
~ Paul
UPDATE: I might have found a solution, here: Split Text frame in 2. Header on the Left, Paragraph on Right. (image inc)
...unless InDesign has introduced a better way to do it since last year?
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Hi Paul,
did you try anchored text frames for the headings?
Anchored to the first insertion point of the paragraph.
The header's background could be a paragraph shading of the paragraphs in the main text.
Regards,
Uwe
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Thanks Laubender​. I'd just found that method too; I tried to update my original question with the anchor explanation, but the forum won't let me. So here's what I did:
That video was fairly useless, just showing someone applying a style and a load of magic happening, with no guidance on how to do the magic. So instead I discovered anchored objects: Cut the text box containing the header, paste it at the start of the paragraph, right-click this newly-pasted text box, choose Anchored Object > Options... and play around with those lovely settings. Job done.
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Ah! You found Obi Wan's workaround using Line Styles perhaps:
Column for heading, column for body text?
Regards,
Uwe
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Yes, but I think the anchored text boxes option looked more straightforward.
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Assuming your body text is Left aligned, Myriad 10/12.
For body text: assign big enough Left Indent (let’s start with 30 mm).
For heading: assign Baseline Shift -12 mm.
Space between chapters can be adjusted by making Heading leading bigger / smaller. Say, setting it to 0 effectively eliminates any additional space.
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I played with indenting the body text, un-indenting the header and moving it down with a baseline shift, but it would all go a bit wrong if the header went to two lines, so I'm sticking with the pasted/anchor method for now.
But thanks, everyone, for your quick and detailed replies!
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in Laubender's link, you can see the solution to that in one of Obi-Wan's later posts: create several character styles, each with an increasing baseline shift (i.e. style 1 has a shift of -18, style 2 -36, style 3 -54, depending on the leading you want to use). then use them sequentially as nested line styles in the heading para style.
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Yes, I noticed that (various character styles for different numbers of lines).
It's odd that InDesign can't do this automatically.
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it is kind of awkward initially, but once it's set up it's as good as automatic.