Second Line Indent - Bullets

[Cheryl655]

Hey there.  Newbie here.  I haven't been in Indesign for 6 months.  I am creating a bulleted list using a pragraph style.  I used to hit (I think) Ctrl \ to get the second line of a bullet to line up with the text on the first line.  When I am doing it now, it indents the second line but way too far to the right.

[Peter Spier · Accepted solution]

In the paragraph style, make sure you've got bullets enabled, then set the left indent on the paragraph to the amount you want all but the first line to be indented, then set a negaive indent of equal size on the first line (this is called a hanging indent). You can adjust the tab value as well to match the left indent to make the first line text start at the same point after the bullet as the following lines. You don't need the indent to here character.

[Chris1868 · Accepted solution]

Here is an image to further show what Peter is talking about.

[vivekg17706440]

I'm having the same issue (trying to get the second line of a numbered section to start with the text of the line above). Adjusting the settings to match the ones above doesn't seem to fix it.

[Laubender]

Increase the value for left indent a bit and set first line indent and tab position accordingly.

Regards,
Uwe

[DAVID293523471b2l]

Tabs are the way to go here. Just set your tab size and soft return and hit tab instead of worrying about indent.

[SJRiegel]

This is terrible advice. I have had the misfortune to have to make edits to files set up this way. The first bit of added or removed text throws all of the rest of the lines out of wack, and suddenly your indent is not longer correct and you have tabs randomly placed throughout your lines.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Um, first, this is a very old thread. It's not often useful to resurrect them except for a very specific comment about a narrow topic that may not have been resolved.

And your suggestion is... completely wrong. Bullets in InDesign use the indent/negative indent method as the starting point for this kind of list formatting; most approaches build on that. Soft returns should (almost) never be used in an app like InDesign that relies on paragraph styles as a basic building block of formatting.

Your method is how it's done in Word, by a very unskilled user. Even there, adjustments of the style and indents is the correct way, not "break/tab" secondary lines.

Really. 🙂

[BobLevine]

I'll pile on here only to let anyone lurking and looking for answers know that while well-intentioned (I hope) is absolutely awful advice.