InDesign Docs

This is another addition to the Feature Galleries series. I’ve provided as many types of bulleted lists and numbered lists as I can think of.

When you need to create a simple list of bulleted or numbered paragraphs, just select the paragraphs and click the Bulleted List or Numbered List button on the Control panel. Alt/Option-click the button to bring up a dialog box that lets you format the list. See the Create bulleted or numbered lists and Format a bulleted or numbered list Help topics.

You may also want to check out the Bullets and Numbering in InDesign CS3 section of the Real World InDesign CS3. (Bullets and numbering hasn’t changed since CS3.)

Whenever you need the numbered list to be broken up or intermingled with other paragraphs or list items, define a list style that’s part of a paragraph style. For example, in a technical manual, you might want a numbered list for headings that continues across multiple text frames, and you might want to use running captions for images and tables. Define a separate list for each type of numbering.

See the Defining lists Help topic.

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This is a long article that’s only going to get longer as I find more and more text effects to add to the gallery — and this is only a small sample of the many ways in which you can manipulate text in InDesign.

To skew the text like this, I selected characters on the left side of the word and applied a negative skew value, and then I selected characters on the right side of the word and applied a positive skew value. See Skew type in InDesign Help.

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It’s show and tell time. I’ll show you pictures of tabs and indents, and I’ll tell you how to create the effect. Or, at least I’ll point you to the Help topic that tells you how to do it.

When you press the Tab key, the insertion point moves to the next tab setting. If you haven’t manually entered any tab settings, default tab settings appear every 3p. These tab settings don’t appear on the Tabs ruler.

1. Choose Type > Tabs to display the Tabs ruler (also called the Tabs dialog box).
2. Click above the ruler where you want the tab setting to appear.
3. On the left side of the Tabs ruler, click to indicate which type of setting you want (Left, Center, Right, or Decimal).

See the Tabs and indents Help topic.

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We recently did a usability study on page numbering in InDesign. Participants worked through a series of page numbering tasks that I asked them to perform. Although I made a few changes to a couple of Help topics, I kept thinking that what people really needed was pictures of page numbering effects and brief descriptions of how to create those effects. So that’s what I’m doing here. Perhaps later, I’ll clean up the pictures and add this to Help.

Adding page numbering isn’t the most intuitive task in InDesign. You basically create a text frame on a master page and insert the Current Page Number marker (choose Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Current Page Number). If your document has facing pages, remember to add page number markers to both master pages. See Add basic page numbering in Help.

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