How to split up a text column

SudiScott, if you read every thread and every discussion in full, you will notice that *most* answers are, in fact, to the point, helpful, and correct. That is -- if the question was clearly stated in the first place, legible, with a reproducible scenario (to test possible solutions), and -- must admit, my personal gripe -- NOT something that could easily be found in either the InDesign online Help or with the same question typed *literally* into Google.

Even when a question violates any or all of these "rules", there usually is *someone* prompting the hapless OP for

- a clearer explanation (a common error is to forget to include an essential detail; if it's clear what's missing, the follow up question may detail how & where to find this information)

- a reproducible example (in case the OP notices that "sometimes ID does *this* an' I wan'it to do *that*)

- details on used software, and -- fortunately less important, lately -- hardware, including but not limited to ID version (which sometimes is literally *crucial* to the answer), operating system, printer drivers, mouse drivers, additional InDesign plugins and external utilities such as font management software.

--

Things I personally react badly on }:-/

- posters assuming they are talking to Adobe or Adobe staff. We're volunteers, and this is the User to User forum. 'Nuff said.

- posters who think they're interacting with an automated answering machine (a recent one, "create hyperlinks in indesign". That was all. Now what kind of question is *that*!?) (insert your guess after this tone: ...)

- posters who take an answer for granted and never come back to even tell if it worked or not. Heck, sometimes not even a "thank-you-but I worked it out myself in the mean time." Sometimes even investigating a problem takes up some time, let alone attempting to find a solution. Feedback IS appreciated.

- Lame Subject titles :D "Help me" is a *bad* subject title. Everyone comes here for help. "Indesign" is a *bad* subject title. This IS, after all, the InDesign forum. "Problem overprinting spot color shadow" is better (I just made that one up, don't know if this is, actually, a problem.)

Those are things that rub me the wrong way, and so, after a couple of false starts, I take nowadays the safe route of trying NOT to answer such post. ... well, perhaps not always, as some days the train is late, it rains, we're out of coffee and Real work is piling up. But hey, I try. Some days harder than on others.

--

You might get a terse, short, to the point answer anyway, even if your question was comprehensive, well-stated, and polite ... but, all said and done, if the answer is a clear "yes", "no", or "use Text Wrap", well, sometimes that says it all. In such a case, the proper term is given and you should be able to find "Text Wrap" in the online Help. (Not the "Yes" and "No" questions, though. Maybe these should form a category of their own.)

All in all: we're not here to scare you away. Not even Bob Levine (the dude with the intimidating beard and the shortest -- and highly accurate -- replies in this forum to date).

--

Merely *reading* discussions on this forum teaches you a lot.

It tells you of the wide range of people using InDesign, from youths growing up in a colorful GUI world using Comic Sans, to retired folks wielding a Mouse for the first time to create family photo albums. From wet behind their ears "graphic designers" to old pros who started out on hot lead sputtering Linotype machines. From black-and-white paper loving "tree killers" (hah! that's me!) to fancy e-pub designers (the "tree huggers", and don't you dare asking where their electricity comes from :D). From decades-long Pagemaker and Quark users to decades-long InDesign users, all the way up from InDesign 1.0 (or "Shuksan", as it was known in pre-beta).

It'll give you an insight in the myriad of everyday problems of us, minions, on topics as diverse as file formats, color theory, font styles, book binding, and the occasional latest hi-tech "The New Book Killer" -- whether web site, Flash, PDF, or App.

Expanding your knowledge of the English language comes as a bonus. Even though explicit swearing is not allowed by the forum software, at one time or another all of us have cussed the paint off of a door ... (Off topic thought: I learned my skills between the printing presses. Maybe Graphic language comes with the territory.)