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Specifically how they relate to Paragraph Styles. And even particularly when typing to make empty empty spaces with rules. I select my new Paragraph Style "Rule Below" and as soon as I select it, the entirety of my text now has a rule on it. It's even hard to explain what my problem is.
If I want a predetermined Tab area to be an area with just a rule and no type, how can I do that? As soon as I select my Rule Paragraph Style it just applies the rule to everything. This is irritating beyond belief. And every time I look for a guide on working with Rules it isn't comprehensive enough to deal with a scenario of "Rule on - Rule off" wherever it's needed. Especially with empty space. Please help. I'm losing my mind.
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For rule below, positive values move the rule down, negative move it up. Te opposite for rule above.
This is a little counter-intuitive.
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In case someone doesn't understand, "empty space" as in; when creating a form.
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I use a Tab, or (thin) space between the last character in the label and the tab, and apply an underline to the tab using a character style. You can even do that as a nested style as part of the paragraph style.
Paragraph rules are not the same animal at all -- they are a line applied either bove or below the paragraph, not to any internal white space.
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Tab with an underscore leader is simpler but has fewer 'tweaking' options — and it's the universal method in most text tools like Word. I think the OP got misled by having too many options in ID. 🙂
I tend to use the underscore method over the character-format method, but the latter does allow for some automation with nested styles and being able to precisely adjust the underline is an asset.
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I've often seen underscore leaders that print as individual underscores, as well, which I find extremely ugly. Seems to depend on the font in use.
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Font and spacing. Applying some negative tracking, manually or as a character style, fixes that. The underline attribute is certainly smoother.
I often use a faint gray line (usually em-dashes) as the leader for TOCs, and it's easy to apply a character style that touches up spacing, font weight etc. for that use.
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Plus, as you mentioned, you can adjust the position below the text and the weight of the line, things you can't do with an underscore leader (well maybey you could do the postion with a baseline shift, but that's making things even uglier from a file construction point of view.
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Sometimes you just need to bash out a form without time for elegance. 😄
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Hi @Prenihility:
I'm unclear on the question. We can explain how Rules Above and Below work, but we need to better grasp the use case. Screenshots are very helpful.
Focusing on the word "form" and "empty empty spaces with rules", are you asking how to create a line that spans the frame for forms fields? There are multiple ways to do this. I use a right-indent tab (Shift+Tab) with a underline as the leader character.
If I have completely misunderstood, just let us know and please try to clarify the question, including a screen shot or sketch.
~Barb
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I *think* you're confusing rules with underlines. Here's five ways InDesign uses lines or rules:
- You can create a Character Style for underlining. In addition to just turning it on and off, you can adjust the thickness and offset of the underline. It will only appear on text you select and apply the character style to. (There are also separate definitions for overline and strikethrough, but again these will only appear on text the style is applied to.)
- You can create a Rule Above or a Rule Below (or both, but they are defined separately) as part of a Paragraph Style. The defined rules will be applied to the entire paragraph—every paragraph with this style will have a rule above, below or both. You can control the thickness, vertical offset, and margin indents of these rules.
- You can create a Border around a Paragraph Style. Much the same as Rule Above/Below, but on all four sides, selectively. You can use this for just one rule on any side, or a combination such as top and left rules.
- You can use a Rule Above to force a paragraph (such as a chapter heading) down from the top margin. The thickness of the rule and the offset combine to define this distance, and you can make the rule invisible with color=None. You also have to check "Keep in Frame" for this to work.
- And finally, you can define a tab to have any 'leader' character you like, including an underscore. If you set the tab to a far-left position and give it an underscore leader character, it will create an underlined space from start to finish, but not under any other text. I think that's what you're trying to accomplish here. You don't do that with any of the paragraph styles, and it's clumsy with character styles, so style the tab and its leader character underline to achieve this effect. (Or apply a character style with a more carefully defined underline to the tab space, but that's a bit clunky.)
Do any of those address the problems you're seeing?
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┋┊ InDesign to Kindle (& EPUB): A Professional Guide, v3.1 ┊ (Amazon) ┊┋
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We know different rules:
- Paragraph rules (above and below) as part of paragraph styles
- Paragraph frames (and shadows) as pRt of paragraph styles
- Underline, strike through, a character property, part of character styles. Those can be applied automatically as nested styles, GREP styles, hyperlinks and cross references.
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Alright, so after some investigation, I understand the method to my teacher's madness. He's using columns to use as guides for the Tabs. Makes sense. In the first screenshot you'll see the 6 columns visible. In the second i've disabled part of the UI so you can see it with less clutter. Special Characters are also visible in the first screenshot.
So what doesn't make sense to me is how everything is set. There are different Paragraph Styles. Rule Above, Rule Below. No Rule. If the rules are set from Tab Marker-to-Tab Marker, i'm having trouble understanding how a rule is set all across the entire width of the document. I... KIND OF think I understand it more. I see NO DIFFERENCE in some of the Paragraph Styles. Other than tab settings IN THE PARAGRAPH STYLES. I didn't pay much attention to those. And it actually interacts with the document UI and you can see it in real-time.
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Use in your case tables. I think it is the simplest way to make these lines.
What I see, you use multiple returns. Avoid that. 1 return and no more in a raw.
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Hi @Prenihility:
What you see as clutter, we see as information. It shows us how the file is set up.
It looks from here (without examining the actual file) that Services Provided and Itemized Expenses have a ruling line defined above, with no left/right indents. They run the length of the text frame. And that 1, 2, 3 and Illustration/Photography have a ruling line defined below, with a substantial left/right indent. The tabs are being used in place of indents to position the text.
Is that your question?
~Barb
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Ok, so after further inspection, the Paragraph Styles share the same tab markers. So my question is simple, how are differently sized Paragraph Rules being created with the different Paragraph Styles. I see no clear reason for it, or how it was set that way.
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Rule isn't even checked off in either of the Paragraph Styles. So as soon as I think i've figured it out; nah.
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I actually noticed this before; last time I tried messing around with this file. You can see in the Style Settings it lists among other things Rule Below for one of the styles. But HOW? Rules isn't even checked on.
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The tabs are controlling the position of the text. They have nothing to do with the rules.
Your screen shot shows Ruling Line Below 0.5pt, Ruling Line Offset: 0p9.
As stated earlier on the thread, there are multiple ways to add lines to an InDesign document. You can
- use the line drawing tool,
- use leaders on a tab stop (this is not being used in your document),
- use custom underlines,
- define a ruling line above or below a paragraph,
- use the border command, and
- create this entire invoice in a table (which makes most logically).
I recognize that you are a student in a class and trying to figure out what the teacher is trying to teach you. They likely have a reason behind this specific approach. As a career InDesign trainer, I would prefer my students reached out to me directly to ask questions. And that's what I recommend you do here if we aren't able to fully explain this to you.
~Barb
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Also, I create a fresh document and try and do this myself. Rule below. New paragraph style. Very basic. Rule Below, offset it so it's actually below. And then I get a rule IN the letters also. It looks like a strikethrough. HOW?
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Hi @Prenihility:
You will need to adjust the offset values to control the rule's vertical position.
Rule Above Example:
Rule Below Example:
~Barb
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For rule below, positive values move the rule down, negative move it up. Te opposite for rule above.
This is a little counter-intuitive.
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BAH! I also didn't see that it's actually a Drop-down menu. Annoying. But yes, there is a value for the offset for how long it runs horizontally.
And on a side note. I have a new problem, I reckon it's an easy fix. I can't seem to find the culprit. Whenever I start typing with no style selected; i just select a font manually, I get a paragraph rule as soon as I input any character. What's going on?
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There's no such thing as no paragraph style selected in InDesign -- something is ALWAYS selected, so you should check to see what that default style is. Look for the style with the text tool active, but no text selected. An active cursor will show you what the style you are about to type will be. No text frame selected will show you the default style for for all new text frames in the document.
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I'm clueless on this one.
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Here I selected a random font; Gutenberg. Typed some nonsense aaaannnd... a rule.
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