An Introduction to 'In Design'

Alan Rolfe, University of West London, Ealing, London

Text formatting

Once text has been imported or typed into a frame, there are many ways in which it can be formatted.

Character formatting

Bring up the Character Format palette by selecting 'Window/Types-and-Tables/Character'.

This gives control over a wide variety of character parameters, including:

• font (or, more correctly, type-face)
• style (regular, bold, italic, etc.)
• leading (pronounced 'ledding' - the separation between the lines)
• tracking (horizontal separation)

(This is not an exhaustive list.)

To apply any of these to a section of text, first select the text using the Type Tool .

Paragraph formatting

The Paragraph Format Palette can be obtained in the same way as the Character Format Palette. It looks like this:

Parameters on this palette generally apply to whole paragraphs, so it is not necessary to select the text unless multiple paragraphs are to be changed. Just click anywhere within the chosen paragraph with the Type Tool

Paragraph attributes include the following:

• alignment (left, right, centred and several justified options which differ only in respect to the the last line)
• left indent
• first line indent (measured with respect to left indent)
• right indent
• vertical space before and/after the paragraph
• drop capitals (specify number of letters and number of lines to be dropped)
• hyphenation (on or off)

Spelling

As with most Word Processing and DTP packages, In-Design has a built-in spellchecker.

To access this, select 'Edit/Spelling/Check Spelling' which opens the following dialogue box:

In CS4 spell-checking will automatically start when you select this, but if you want to alter the options and re-start, click anywhere in a text frame and the checking will stop, allowing you to change things. You can now choose an option at the bottom according to how much of the text you want to check. Your choices are:

• All [open] documents
• Document
• Story
• To End Of Story

When you click 'Start', the checker will scan the text looking for suspicious words. When it finds one it will enter it into the top box and give you a list of possible alternatives below:

You can:

• Skip this word i.e. leave it as it is.
• Select an alternative and Change the word, or type in your own correction in the 'Change To' box.
• Ignore All i.e. ignore this word and also any further occurrences of it.
• Change All: as for Change but also changes any further occurrences.
• Add: add the word as presently spelled to your own personal dictionary. (This option may not be available or may not work on networked machines.)

Settings for the spellchecker can be altered under 'Edit>Preferences>Spelling'.

Remember that a spellchecker is somewhat of a blunt instrument. It will not detect:

• misspelled proper nouns e.g. people's names
• use of the wrong word (e.g. 'there' for 'their')
• grammatical errors

Also, it may not suggest the right alternative, or you may not recognize the right alternative.

Always read the text through thoroughly as well as using the spellchecker.

Maintained by Alan Rolfe

© Copyright UWL 2011

Last updated July 6, 2011