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Trouble with Indesign text adjustments.

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
December 3, 2020
4 replies
658 views

I am trying to use a pargraph style to edit some text. The only issue is that all text that is connected by spaces or soft returns is affected regardless of what I highlight to change. The only way to prevent this is to do a full return in which a pilcrow would show up. I need the text on the same line and doing a pilcrow of soft return does not let me do that.

How can I only the text I highlight with the paragraph style?

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Correct answer Barb Binder

That's clarifying.

Here's how I would approach this task:

Create a character style for the food name. Don't assign it yet.
Create a paragraph style for the description. Assign it to the menu items.
Assuming that the food name isn't always the name number of words, add a defining character at the end of the food name. For example, I am using a period between the food and the description.
Bread. Fresh from the oven.
Pizza. Warm and gooey.
Stuffed Jalapenos. Spicy and cheesy.
Add a nested character style to the paragraph style that automatically applies the character style up to (or through) the defining character.

Bread. Fresh from the oven.

Pizza. Warm and gooey.
Stuffed Jalapenos. Spicy

This allows you to use a single paragraph style to format both sections individually. Details in the second half of this link: https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/indesign/using/drop-caps-nested-styles.html

~Barb

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hey Gary:

This actually worked.

Thanks for my morning laugh. 😂

I know it is your first time here, and likely didn't know what to expect. We are all working professionals on the CC applications who volunteer time on the community forums to help other users. Given a clear question, we can usually come up with an answer because this is what we do for a living.

That said, we are not employed by Adobe so we have no control over how the software works. When you have feedback on InDesign—such as how you think paragraph styles ought to work—that should be logged as a feature request (https://indesign.uservoice.com/), so that it will be seen by the InDesign engineering team.

When you are trying to figure out how to accomplish a specific task, then come back and ask us. We are always happy to help, Gary.

~Barb

P.S. Thanks for the heads up on the link. There was a space at the end that was causing the misdirection. It's working now.

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

Barb Binder

Correct answer

Community Expert

That's clarifying.

Here's how I would approach this task:

Create a character style for the food name. Don't assign it yet.
Create a paragraph style for the description. Assign it to the menu items.
Assuming that the food name isn't always the name number of words, add a defining character at the end of the food name. For example, I am using a period between the food and the description.
Bread. Fresh from the oven.
Pizza. Warm and gooey.
Stuffed Jalapenos. Spicy and cheesy.
Add a nested character style to the paragraph style that automatically applies the character style up to (or through) the defining character.

Bread. Fresh from the oven.

Pizza. Warm and gooey.
Stuffed Jalapenos. Spicy

This allows you to use a single paragraph style to format both sections individually. Details in the second half of this link: https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/indesign/using/drop-caps-nested-styles.html

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

G

Gary5CBFAuthor

Participating Frequently

This actually worked. I can even delete the period after I apply the style to hide how it was forced through,

Thank you.

Also your link comes up as an Adobe page but it just says 404 really big and then has the rest of Adobe information at the top and bottom of the screen.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Perhaps you would like to share the assignment with us so that we can understand what you are being asked to do.

I want to reiterate that a paragraph style will always format an entire paragraph whether or not you want it to. It's nonnegotiable. That's just how InDesign works.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

G

Gary5CBFAuthor

Participating Frequently

Create a menu using paragraph styles. The name of the food item would be in one and the description in another; however, the all of it is inside the same paragraph with the Pilcrow being at the end of the description. Since this is all copy and pasted information, I do not really control the groupings.

I understand the nonnegotiability of it, it just seems like there would be some difference from highlighting any amount of text and just placing the cursor in the paragraph and yet both give the exact same result only when using paragraph Styles but in Character Styles it only works on highlighted material but placing the cursor inside a word doesn't change the word it is placed in.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Use a paragraph style to format an entire paragraph—everything from the beginning of the paragraph up to the pilcrow. Use a character style to format text selected within that paragraph.

If you need additional help with this, please share a screenshot and we can be more precise.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

G

Gary5CBFAuthor

Participating Frequently

This did work but that doesn't do what I asked. I only want the highlighted text affected regardless of the style I use. Since this is for school, not following directions does not help me. Using character styles when told to use paragraph styles does not help. This defeats the whole purpose of highlighting what text to work on when utilitzing paragraph styles, as character styles would work just the same on paragraphs that I highlighted.

It is a nice feature to have it change the whole paragraph but when highlighting is involved that should be disabled as just clicking in the paragraph would produce this same affect by just placing the cursor inside the paragraph you wish to change.

jmlevy

Community Expert

I think that you misunderstand the difference between paragraph styles and character styles. As Barb explained, if you want to format a selection, you MUST use character styles, that what they are designed for. A paragraph style will ALWAY format the whole paragraph, regardless what you have selected.

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