First, because paragraph formatting (which we’ll discuss later) always applies to an entire paragraph, you don’t have to select every character in the paragraph before applying it. However, there are two caveats to this statement. Generally, when you want to change the formatting of some text, you have to select it with the Type tool. Along the way, there may be a joke or two.

We’ll start with character formatting (font, point size, kerning, and baseline shift are examples of character formatting), move on to paragraph formatting (indents, tabs, space above and below, and composition), and then dive into formatting using character and paragraph styles. In this chapter, we’ll walk through InDesign’s typesetting features. It’s an evolutionary product-not a revolutionary one, but, on its release, InDesign became the best desktop typesetting program, and raised the bar for its competition. Not a chance-InDesign offers a number of improvements and surprises in the area of typesetting. Does that mean, however, that there’s no more room for improvement? For surprising new features? Is typesetting “done”? These days, page layout programs are far more capable than Ole’s trusty EditWriter. When desktop publishing appeared, we found that it couldn’t do everything Ole could do with his Compugraphic-but that being able to see what our type would look like before we printed it more than made up for any deficiencies.

I could set just about any kind of type using that machine, provided the characters would fit on a piece of film not more than seven inches wide, and provided I didn’t need to use characters from more than six fonts.” The codes and characters I saw on my screen wouldn’t look anything like type until they were printed, one character at a time, on a strip of photographic film and developed. Desktop publishing didn’t exist yet, and digital (as opposed to photo) typesetting systems-with their WYSIWYG displays-were rare. “These are the things I think of when I hear the word ‘typesetting’-they’re memories from my job at Seattle’s free rock and roll newspaper The Rocket, circa 1982. The gentle snoring of one of the staff writers, who is curled up in the warmth of the unit that holds the filmstrips containing the fonts I’m using to set his story.

The smell of the office standard ‘French Vanilla’ coffee-warming, now, for several hours and resembling nothing so much as battery acid. The pale glow from the monochrome monitor of my Compugraphic phototypesetter.

Indesign hanging indent