stlye for more ballanced lines

[hendy_5450]

Which option by pargraph styles would get these lines more balanced out?

[Peter Spier]

It may or may not help to check the Balance Ragged Lines box in the INdents and Sapcing section of your style definition.

[BobLevine]

You may just have to fix that manually.

[Eugene Tyson · Accepted solution]

Either tracking/kerning the entire paragraph so it fits (I tend not to go beyond -30) 

Or add a non-breaking space between the two words - or a no break. 

I had a grep that was complex for this task to find the last space - I can share later when I have indesign open - but someone else shared a simpler way 

Create a character style called No Break and enable the No Break feature in the style.

in the Grep Style

No Break Style

.{10}$

and if 10 is not enough then make it 11 or 12 or 15 - whatever works. 

This keeps the last 10 characters no matter what they are as No Break, so they stay together. Just change the number to decrease/increase the requirement.

[hendy_5450]

yes, thank you.

I've done this in the paste, but it's currently not working.

Would there be a reason for this?

[Eugene Tyson · Accepted solution]

it's applying a no break style to the last 10 characters (any character) in the paragraph. 

If it goes over 10 characters it stops applying the no break. 

You can increase the value to 11 or 15 or 20 - whatever you think suits your needs best. 

As for my own personal needs

the grep I use is

(?=\w{1,8}..?$)

And again - apply an increase or decrease by changing the 8 value. 

This targets the very last space in a paragraph. 

Usully I do a find change at the end to replace all before making the PDF. In tandem with about 20 other GREPs to tidy up the text for my needs.

[hendy_5450]

thank you for your answer,

but I'm still confused why isn't it getting divided evenly and in some places the line underneath is longer
(as indicated)

[Eugene Tyson]

The GREP style using .{10}$ applies a No Break character style to the last 10 characters of a paragraph, regardless of what they are.

This means:

If the final line of the paragraph is shorter than or exactly 10 characters, the No Break is applied to everything so it forces those words to stick together, often resulting in a visibly shorter final line.

If the final line is longer than 10 characters, the No Break is only applied to the last 10 characters but if those characters don't include a space, or if the word before that is too long to fit, the effect can be subtle or invisible.

No Break is applied every time, but it only has a noticeable impact when the line is short enough for the effect to kick in. Otherwise, InDesign just flows the text as best it can, and that sometimes leads to visually uneven final lines.

Are you looking to have to end of all paragraphs be the same length visually? 

[hendy_5450]

I'm looking to have neat paragraphs, what would you suggest?

[Eugene Tyson]

What do you mean by neat? 

Can you show before and after mockups? 

[hendy_5450]

I would like these bullets for instructions to be easy to read.

Would you say having one word on the last line is fine?

or is there something to do about this format to get a more professional look?

[BobLevine]

Please go back and look at my original answer...Some of this requires manual intervention. But to add to it, if it looks okay it is okay. Tweaking the glyph scaling, word and letting spacing can work wonders.

You're showing us tiny snippets of pages which are, to be very frank, worthless as far as making any kind of judgment. All of this is highly dependent on the length of the column the text is in as well as all of the surrounding material. 

[hendy_5450]

I want to know in general what would be the best way to format these instructions