I can't understand how to work with Rules work in InDesign

[Prenihility]

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.

[Peter Spier]

Looks like at some point the team brought back the ability to assign [No Paragraph Style], so apparently you are correct that there is no defined style assigned, but there are still formatting defaults.I apologize for saying this was impossible -- it was for many years.

Rules are a Paragraph attribute, not dependent on the font. Looks like they've been set by default (activated with no active text selection). Open the paragraph rules dialog with no selected text and make sure they are off. That should keep them from popping up when not desired.

As a long-time professional user of InDesign, and without seeing your file, my impression is that it was very poorly planned and implemented by the original designer. I used to see this on occasion in text book example files when I was teaching and I would always point out why the file was badly constructed, and explain what could be done to make things better. While you may be learning about paragraph rules this way, I honestly think the use is completely inappropriate and unduly complicating things. Tabs, either underlined or with leaders, would be far easier to control for building these forms, as several of us have tried to explain earlier.

[rob day]

Hi @Prenihility , Maybe this helps a bit with the rule Offset logic.

When you choose Rule Above the rule starts at the baseline of the paragraph’s first line. A positive Offset moves the rule further up:

When you choose Rule Below the rule starts at the baseline of the paragraph’s last line and a positive offset moves the rule further down:

[rob day]

I'm clueless on this one.

With no text selected, open your Paragraph panel and choose Paragraph Rules from the flyout menu. Make sure both Rule Above and Rule Below are unchecked. Now the default for new text frames will be no paragraph rules.