Re: Line Spacing within paragraphs

[Scott Falkner]

Leading is a character-based attribute. If you change the leading for selected text within a paragraph, only that text is affected. The rest of the paragraph is left alone.

[Karen_D...@adobeforums.com]

Is there a way of adjusting the line spacing within paragraphs? Sometimes I need to squeeze lines closer together. Other times I need to "double space" the lines in the paragraph. I've used baseline shifts to push lines together in headings, titles, etc, but how do you do it in a paragraph? If you can do it in MS Word, then you'd think you could do it ID.
I'm using InDesign CS3 version 5.0.2 in Windows XP.
Thanks! Karen

[Robert Tkaczyk]

you can do this only in TextFrame - vertical justification or something like that

robin

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www.adobescripts.com

[Karen_D...@adobeforums.com]

I just tried the justification option in the paragraph menu. "Autoleading" turns out to be what I needed. It defaults to 120%. 200% is doublespacing. 100% has the lines right up against each other. It applies to the whole paragraph.
Thanks!
It never occured to me that that was what "autoleading" meant.
Karen

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

You can specify any leading you want (as long as it's between 0 and 5000pts). In ID, its both a paragraph and a character level attribute. If you want the equivalent of 100% autoleading ("set solid"), just set the leading equal to the point size of the type (eg, 12 for 12pt type). And 200% would be twice that (24 for 12pt type).

[Ken_...@adobeforums.com]

"It never occured to me that that was what "autoleading" meant."

Autoleading is a convenient way of applying the same percentage of leading to all type throughout a document. When you want to make type look denser or more spaced out you set a specific leading value, as the others have described.

The concepts of double spacing and single spacing are pretty meaningless in the context of desktop publishing. They hark back to typewriters when you only had mechanical control of multiples of lines.

Leading goes back to early typesetting days when type was set as single characters or single lines on chunks of soft metal and these chunks were stacked on top of each other to make a column of type. The thickness of the metal dictated the space between the lines, and the term "leading" has remained to describe the spacing of lines of type.

In a DTP program leading can be pretty well anything you like, within the overall capabilities of the program to render it.

Word processors still refer to line spacing because their ancestry is in typewriters not typesetters, and the people who use them would understand line spacing, but are likely to be confused by "leading".

k

[Ken_...@adobeforums.com]

Scott: not completely true. You can elect for leading applied at character level to apply to entire paragraphs in Preferences > Type > Apply LEading to Entire Paragraphs.

k

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

As others have mentioned, word uses the term line spacing instead of leading, but it works exactly the same way as it does in InDesign. Most people just never look at the options beyond single, or double spaced. If you change the spacing to "Exactly" and enter a value, that's the same thing you are doing when you you set a leading value other than "Auto" in InDesign.

The problem with auto leading values is they are figured for "average" body text situations, which really don't exist, and may not be appropriate for any particular typeface at any particular size. Some faces have larger x-heights, some short x-heights and long ascenders, and so forth. 120% leading (the default for automatic) may not give optimum spacing between lines to maintain readability (that's the point of leading) in body text, and it is almost always too much in headlines.

Most professional typesetters will specify an absolute leading value for any particular font and size when they define the paragraph styles. This also allows you to set up baseline grids more easily if you need to maintain horizontal alignments across a page or spread.

Peter