Adding a (continued) to headings that cross columns or page breaks in Word/RTF output

[Alan Bowman]

Hello everyone,

The short version: When the subheadings for a heading cross a column or a page break, how do you add something like: Heading (continued) to the Word/RTF output? 

The longer version: When I generate the RTF file for an index I'm working on, the subheadings for a few headings either cross over into the second column or onto the next page. I would like the heading for that group of subheadings to appear again, with a (continued) annotation. The index for the SKY User's Guide shows how this looks - just search for (continued) to find a number of examples. 

I've looked through the SKY User's Guide and at all the options and preferences in SKY that I can think of, but either this doesn't exist and is done manually or I'm not sure what to look for. 

Any assistance is appreciated. 

Thanks,

 Alan  

[Deborah Patton]

Good question. The short and simple answer is: don't worry about it.

If you are typesetting the index, then you are right to be concerned, but each of those columns must be evaluated individually and all the continued lines are done by hand in the typesetting software.

When I send my finished index to a customer, it's out of my hands. Many publishers think continued lines are an extra annoyance so they don't bother with them. Pretty disheartening since we know they're helpful!

Depending on the client, I sometimes suggest I'd be happy to help make sure their index works well by proofreading the typeset index. I can then suggest continued lines, but I don't always win that one.

Deborah

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[Alan Bowman]

Deborah,

Thanks for the explanation. I find those (continued) lines really useful when using an index, so I wanted to figure out how to add them. It does make sense that they're part of typesetting and not generated by the index, though. 

Alan 

[Indexing]

Hello, Alan.

Late to this but confirming what Deborah has written. Generally clients won’t want the extra formatting. And depending on index length, even if they give you detailed font and line length information, they may fiddle with kerning and leading and the line breaks will change. 

Different if you are producing a “camera-ready” index. 

Heidi

On Oct 31, 2025, at 5:08 PM, Alan Bowman <alanb...@gmail.com> wrote:



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