Disappearing Paragraph Rules: A Mystery
Sometimes we learn things when something goes wrong. I had two fascinating InDesign discoveries today while trying to fix other people’s files. I’ll write one up now and one up as soon as I get a chance.
Someone was trying to figure out what was going wrong with a page element — in this case, an object that was created using Rule Above. I love all the clever ways people use Rule Above (or Rule Below) to create cool things that don’t really look like normal lines. For example, here’s a big red circle that floats up and to the left of a paragraph:
This could have been done with an anchored object, but in this case, it was built with a Rule Above:
But today, someone was asking me why the Rule Above was narrower than it should be. In fact, it actually disappeared from time to time! It didn’t make sense to me. What on earth was going on here? Then it hit me: There were objects that had text wrap nearby. Those objects didn’t touch the rule; in fact, they hardly touched the text! But the Right Indent for the Rule was affected by them nevertheless.
As soon as the text wrap was removed, or Ignore Text Wrap was turned on for the text frame (in Text Frame Options), the Rule Above kicked back in.
For me, it was a good example of the rule: You never know what’s going to affect something on your page… even things that are not seemingly related. Happy troubleshooting!
In response to the big red circle, merrily floating above the text – ist’t that, that a useless trickery (kind of – I-can-scratch-my-left-ear-with-my-right-foot thing) prevents you from using the program in a far more creative way? The final output is – of course – a piece of paper, and no one would waste the time to think how was the red ball created, unless it’s a mind-bogglingly cool design (in our particular case it isn’t, however…).
No, it’s not useless trickery at all. Perhaps I should have used a more useful example, but the underlying technique is extremly useful. Perhaps I should have just come clean and showed the true example, which comes from the author bios in InDesign Magazine,, each of which is preceeded with a small red square. The square is built with the rule above.
There’s no doubt that the red square (or circle or whatever) could be created using other techniques (such as an anchored object), but as a Rule Above, we can make it part of a paragraph style definition! One click and the paragraph is styled and the red square appears. It works great (as long as there’s no pesky text wrap.)
Yes!!!
Anytime you can make a graphic element part of a paragraph style, you are way ahead of the game.
However, I do want to mention that ID CS3’s new Find/Change command to “paste contents of clipboard” does make it much easier to add anchored objects to text.
But that will never be as wonderful as an automatic paragraph style.
So THAT’s what was going on with that Rule Above. Thanks, David!
Paste contents of clipboard in Find/Change?!? WOW Thanks Sandee!
I have used the Rule above and Below feature to build the following things, all with just styles.
Boxes around single lines (headings) of text or boxes around multiple paragraphs of text if each paragraph is one line.
Vertical rules down either side of text or I guess you could put it anywhere in the middle.
Simply applying the style adds the boxes/rules and they go with the text, no need to anchor anything.
Very useful to know how to avoid that indent problem.
I agree with the other commentators who’ve pointed out how valuable it is to use paragraph styles as often, and wherever, you can.
Particularly when you’re working on a long document, it can take a task that would mean hours of work, and reduce it to minutes.
I could not for the LIFE of me figure out why my paragraph rules were disappearing. Mystery solved! Thank you, thank you, thank you!