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Hi again! I hope you don't mind my giving you some pointers as well as answering your queries.
Note 1: Size looks fine. For the ToC, only the page numbers in roman numerals should be italic. Any regular numerals should be Roman (not italic). This goes for the running heads as well; you can do this manually in the parent page or apply an Italic character style to the roman numerals.
Note 2: You're right, those few lines could be tighter. You can adjust the paragraph style to not apply baseline grid, assuming you have a separate paragraph style for those lines (which you definitely should).
Suggestions:
Paragraphs following a heading should be flush left, no indent in the first lines. It's important to have a separate paragraph style for this, everything the same as the body style but no first line indent.
Footnote callouts (the numbers in the text) should follow the periods with no spaces.
What font are you using? I see you've used small caps in the Exercise headings, but it doesn't look as if the font contains small caps, so it's making its own, but they are too light. You could play around with using one weight higher than the headline text, but only if you have a few weights to try, because making them bold would probably be too dark. If you only have Roman, italic, and bold, you probably shouldn't use small caps.
In your screenshot, you marked that you had to do a lot of fiddling to get the # sign to align with the baseline. There's a nifty tool in the top bar that lets you shift the position of text up or down point by point (see below). Notice that the capital C is a point higher than the rest of the letters. This might be easier for you.
Lastly, if at all possible it's good practice to "balance" the pages at the bottom. If you want to spend the time making sure the pages all end on the same line, you can get a how-to for tracking and kerning at this link: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/kerning-tracking.html .
Good luck! And please, if I've given any advice that anyone in the group disagrees with, please correct me! I'm not a true "expert," just a lowly worker bee 🙂
Hey! Sorry for being slow, but here I am.
Thank you so much for your feedback, it is incredibly valuable to me!
Note 1: Size looks fine. For the ToC, only the page numbers in roman numerals should be italic. Any regular numerals should be Roman (not italic). This goes for the running heads as well; you can do this manually in the parent page or apply an Italic character style to the roman numerals.
For the ToC, since I used the same paragraph style for the same kind of headers, I have had to manually change the three entries with arabic numerals to use Regular style. For the preface itself, are you also suggesting that the roman numerals in there should be italics? I use this same parent page both for the Editorial Notes (before the musical part, with Roman numerals) and for the Critical Notes (after the music, with Arabic numerals). Were I to follow your suggestion I think I would need to make a separate parent page with italic numbers for the Editorial Note. Is that correct?
Note 2: You're right, those few lines could be tighter. You can adjust the paragraph style to not apply baseline grid, assuming you have a separate paragraph style for those lines (which you definitely should).
Awesome, thank you! Yes, I have almost too many paragraph styles — perhaps there is not "too many" when it comes to PS, though 🙂
Suggestions:
Paragraphs following a heading should be flush left, no indent in the first lines. It's important to have a separate paragraph style for this, everything the same as the body style but no first line indent.
Thank you for this! It looks so much better.
I have created a copy of the main body PS and set it to bear no indent. Trying to make things quicker, I applied it as "Next Style" to the various Headings used in the Preface, hoping that it would automatically fix all of them. It did not. There are a few reasons I think that why that may be but I am not sure. Is it normal for this to behave like this?
I have also set the next style for the no-indent body to be its indented version but, upon pressing Return, it didn't work. This I really do not know why. My intuition is that it may have to do with parenting, the no-indent being a copy of the indent one, but that may be unrelated.
Any idea?
Adding additional (new) text to the end of the preface worked as intended though. So, may it be that existing text is not being influenced by these changes?
Footnote callouts (the numbers in the text) should follow the periods with no spaces.
I'm not sure I agree with this. I am using British English with an academic style and, from what I have learned, the callout goes before the period in this case. It goes after the period in American English, though. I am no expert in this, but it is what I have read around and been advised to do. Ready to be contradicted!
What font are you using? I see you've used small caps in the Exercise headings, but it doesn't look as if the font contains small caps, so it's making its own, but they are too light. You could play around with using one weight higher than the headline text, but only if you have a few weights to try, because making them bold would probably be too dark. If you only have Roman, italic, and bold, you probably shouldn't use small caps.
Very interesting remark.
The font I am using is Rooney Sans for the inner cover and Rooney for the text. They are both Adobe Fonts. How can one check that a font has or doesn't have small caps? This font has Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, Heavy, and Black so plenty to play with. Starting from Bold, I set the lowercase letters to Heavy and, while a big too fat to me, it looks more cohesive. Do you think that leaving it as it is would be a bad design choice?
Generally speaking, I wasn't using small caps in my design before so I may just as well revert to ordinary capitalisation. What do you think?
In your screenshot, you marked that you had to do a lot of fiddling to get the # sign to align with the baseline. There's a nifty tool in the top bar that lets you shift the position of text up or down point by point (see below). Notice that the capital C is a point higher than the rest of the letters. This might be easier for you.
Oh, I have fiddled with baseline shift more than one ever should but nothing, it would not bulge. Perhaps the font used to render the musical symbols is not too prone to collaborating but, in any case, the only thing that worked reliably was editing the Text Frame Options so that the Baseline type would be either of Ascent, Baseline, or x-height. Sometimes one would work, sometimes the other would work. Not knowledgeable enough to know or understand why at this point. I've not yet had enough Nigel French in my InDesign life 🙂
Lastly, if at all possible it's good practice to "balance" the pages at the bottom. If you want to spend the time making sure the pages all end on the same line, you can get a how-to for tracking and kerning at this link: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/kerning-tracking.html .
This is another very good point.
The first thing I noticed is that the chosen baseline does not divide perfectly into the text frame, resulting in the last line always being empty. Not a big deal since this is consistent throughout. I would try to make it more precise in a future project, though.
I asked myself several times why the last few lines of several columns would remain empty but the only reason I found as a possible culprit would be my paragraph style's Keep Options, which are like this to avoid orphaned lines:
These settings certainly do what I tasked them to, but have the side effect that you mentioned.
I am not sure how changing the tracking-kerning would help here; perhaps making paragraphs stretch to the end of the column? Or something else?
Going page by page in the new version attached below (using PDF page number):
- page 3: the first paragraph of the second column could easily have 2 lines in the previous column but, when I uncheck the "keep together" option, only the first line goes back, even if there is a full leading space available. No idea why. I thought that my space above first footnote could be too great but it's not that.
- page 6: the paragraph before the quote could go in the previous column but them only one line would be orphaned in the second column and, in my opinion, it would look worse.
- page 7: by editing the Keep Options for the last paragraph of the first column, I could get the two columns to end up together but the line with "s/he deems useful for each specific case." would remain alone at the top of the column and it doesn't look great. Would you suggest trying the other way around by adding a Column break at the penultimate line of the second column?
- page 10, end of second column: if I edit the Keep Options of the first body paragraph of page 11 to keep only 1 line together at start, then 2 lines go back to page 10. It's ok but it doesn't look great to me. I vastly prefer the entire exercise to begin on a new column.
- page 11 & 13: I managed to achieve equal bottoms by changing the space above/below for the picture to the right.
- page 16: if I fix it, then page 17 will become problematic. I guess one cannot have everything!
Kindly let me know what you think of this, no rush at all!
Thank you once again for your fantastic feedback!
Note 1: Yes, you should make different parents for pages with Roman numerals and Arabic numerals (those with Roman numerals get italic page numbers, those with Arabic pages get Roman numbers—not too confusing, right? 🙂
Note 2: There really aren't "too many" para styles; just depends on your text. In many of my documents, I might have dozens. It's alway best to have para styles rather than manual styling.
I've had similar poor luck with "Next style" settings but have just never taken the time to explore; I just apply the proper para style. BTW, here's a hint: I set a keyboard shortcut to all my frequently used para styles, so as I go through the text, I only have to select the paragraphs in question and press the keyboard shortcut. To create the shortcuts, edit your para styles, and on the first screen you'll see where to set this up (see below).
Next, I love small caps when the font contains them. To check, highlight the font to which you've applied Small caps, then see below (BTW, thanks to Jongware for the answer to this in 2010; I created my own screenshot to avoid copying):
Re baseline shift, I don't have your musical font, so I can't check this, but we all need more Nigel French!!!
As for balanced pages, as my dad used to say, "Everything's a tradeoff." It's much more important to keep the first and last two lines together than it is to balance the pages. Focus on balancing pages in your next project (IMHO). Please, anyone with a better answer, please chime in!
Happy to help, and please remember, I'm just a user like you, I've just been doing this for a long time, but by all means I don't have the expertise of the vastly more knowledgeable folks here!
It seems that Rooney has Small Caps and so does RooneySans. I may write to the designer to see if this weight difference is intentional.
By @Inélsòre
I did a little digging on this myself, and what you've said seems not to be true. Rooney Pro has small caps, but there seems not to be a "pro" version of Rooney Sans, and Adobe only distributes the standard version of Rooney, not the Pro, so as far as I can tell, there are no true small caps available with Adobe Fonts. You can purchase a license for Rooney Pro at MyFonts.com for the serif, but as I mentioned, there doesn't seem to be a Sans Pro.
The small caps should be the same as the x-height (the height of a lower case letter, such as x or m) of the text. the screenshot below (from pg vii) looks pretty good as far as the height goes.
The small caps should be the same as the x-height (the height of a lower case letter, such as x or m) of the text. the screenshot below (from pg vii) looks pretty good as far as the height goes.
By @Susan Culligan
If the font does not include a small caps, make one. Set a lowercase x next to a capital X then select the capital X. Adjust horizontal and vertical scaling until it looks as close as possible to the dimensions of the lowersace x. You might try bumping the weight up too, like from Light to Normal or Normal to Semibold. Once you have a style that looks right make it a character style and use that for your small caps.
Here my body copy is Avenir Roman. THe lowercase x on the right was used to set a guide. I adjusted horizontal and vertical scaling until the capital X (selected) was the same size, then I bumped the weight up to Medium and made a character style. It’s not perfect but it’s better than the default.
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