Adobe InDesign: Formatting your Text

Name: Adobe InDesign: Formatting your Text
Author: Patti Scully-Lane

Gone are the days when you needed a dedicated team of professional typesetters and pressmen to prepare a poster, brochure, magazine, or newspaper for print. We…

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Course: On-Demand

In this lesson, you are going to learn about formatting in Adobe InDesign. I'm going to use, as a reference, one of the files from the lessons folder. So I'm gonna go to the file menu to open, and I'm gonna have you navigate out to the chapter four lesson files, and we're going to open up character_formatting.indd. When you open up a document in InDesign, to the right, we have our panels. And one of the panels that we've seen is the properties panel. And the properties panel is going to change depending upon what you have selected on your page, as well as what tool you have selected. If we look at this page one of our "Hiking Monthly" newsletter, we can see that there's quite a bit of text at the top area, and maybe we want to change some of that text. Well, if we select our type tool, and click in the "In This Issue" right below the hiking boots, over in the properties panel, this is where we have many of our text properties. The properties panel is a relatively new feature in InDesign, and it's really terrific for people who have been using InDesign for a while, because we know what features InDesign has. However, for someone who is new to InDesign, using the properties panel might not allow you to realize exactly what InDesign has as far as character and paragraph formatting is concerned. So one of the ways that we can find out a little bit more about the character and paragraph formatting in InDesign is by changing our workspace. If we go to the Window menu, to workspace, and switch it over to the advanced workspace, then our panels on the right change, but also, up across the top, we have a new panel and this is our control panel. Now, the control panel is kind of similar to the properties panel in that the control panel will change, depending upon the object that you have selected, as well as the tool that you have selected. When we have our type tool in a text frame, up across the top, we get all of the options for our type. If we look at the control panel in the top left corner, we have the letter A and a paragraph symbol. When the letter A is selected, we get all of our character formatting controls. This includes font and size, and tracking and kerning, and color. When we click on the paragraph icon, this is where we get all of our paragraph formatting controls: alignment, space before and space after, as well as our bullets and numbering options, to name just a few. When we work with the control panel, and we have the character formatting controls available, depending upon how wide your monitor is, you may see some additional paragraph formatting as well. As you can see when I have my character formatting control selected, way over to the right, I have some of my paragraph formatting options. And the same would hold true if I had a larger screen with my paragraph formatting controls. I might see some character formatting controls if I had a larger screen. So, switching back and forth between these two icons will get us all of the formatting that InDesign has available to us with our character and paragraph controls. If we go back to the Window menu, back to workspace, and back to the essentials workspace, which is the new default for InDesign, when we look over in our properties panel, here, we have our character properties, we have our appearance. We have our paragraph properties, and you can see, I can scroll down and I can even get some bullets and numbering. One of the things that's a little bit confusing about our properties panel is that not all of the properties that we saw in our control panel are in the properties panel. So a lot of times when we're working, we're thinking, oh, I've done this before, but it's not here. So what you can do, there is a little ellipse icon just below the character. And this has more options. If we click on that, as you can see, it expands that character area. So, now we do have have more options. If we click it again, it will give us fewer options. And the same thing happens with our paragraph area as well. And this is one of the things that is sometimes confusing for people. They forget about that little button. So, they forget about some of the formatting controls that you have in InDesign. So, if you can't find a property in the properties panel, remember that you do have more options, and you can open up those panels just a little bit more. Or, as you are beginning to format in InDesign, you can use the advanced workspace, which does give you all of the options for character and paragraph formatting controls right up at the top of your page. In this lesson, you learned where to go and what workspaces to use to find the character and paragraph formatting options in Adobe InDesign.

Beginner Provider : Patti Scully-Lane 9 Lessons · 57m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

Gone are the days when you needed a dedicated team of professional typesetters and pressmen to prepare a poster, brochure, magazine, or newspaper for print. We have dedicated apps for all that now, but none quite so prominent as Adobe InDesign, which has come to dominate the desktop publishing industry, making it an essential tool for modern-day communication. In this Beginner Adobe InDesign course, you will learn the basics of working with InDesign and how it fits in with the Creative Cloud desktop app. From there, you will learn how to open existing documents and create new documents from scratch using Adobe’s templates. Then you will progress to adding text and graphics to the page, as well as exploring and applying basic character and paragraph formatting, including a primer on working with Adobe fonts. You will understand how to analyze graphics to determine if they are vector or raster, RGB or CMYK, and if they have the correct resolution for your output. Finally, you will both link and embed graphics to figure out which is best for your situation; then you will see how to crop and modify those graphics to better fit your available page space.

In these lessons, you will discover how to format text for easy page navigation. This course will dive deep into formatting text and characters, as well as different font options. You will also learn how to set up their text with an array of changes, such as paragraph formatting, hyphenation and justification, tabs and tab stops, and more to vary how your text looks within your documents.

What You'll Learn

Format text and paragraphs in Adobe InDesign
Adjust font, text size, and style
Apply bullets, numbered lists, and drop caps
Configure hyphenation, justification, tabs, and tab stops
Work with Adobe font options for your documents
Use Find/Change to edit text efficiently

Key Takeaways

Adobe InDesign is a leading desktop publishing application for preparing posters, brochures, magazines, and newspapers, and works within the Creative Cloud desktop app.
The course covers character and paragraph formatting, including font, text size, and style adjustments.
Formatting text well supports easy page navigation and varies how text looks within a document.
Learners explore formatting options such as drop caps, hyphenation and justification, tabs and tab stops, and bullets and numbering.
The course builds skills in document formatting, typesetting, and works toward Adobe InDesign certification.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is this course for?

This is a beginner-level Adobe InDesign course, suited to learners new to working with InDesign and desktop publishing.

What will I learn to do with text in this course?

You will learn to format text and paragraphs, adjust font, text size, and style, and add formatting options including bullets and numbered lists. It also covers character formatting, Adobe font options, drop caps, hyphenation and justification, tabs and tab stops, and using Find/Change.

What topics do the lessons cover?

Lessons include Formatting in InDesign, Character Formatting, Adobe Font Options, Paragraph Formatting, Using Drop Caps, Hyphenation and Justification, Tabs and Tab Stops, Bullets and Numbering, and Using Find/Change.

What skills does this course build?

It builds skills in Adobe InDesign, document formatting, formatted text, HTML formatting, typesetting, and works toward Adobe InDesign certification.