Force First Line of Justified Paragraph to be Flush Left

Lisa wrote:

I’m using InDesign and I want to justify a paragraph, but the first line (the title of the paragraph) has to be aligned left.

The simplest solution is to break this into two paragraphs — a heading paragraph followed by a body para. But it sounds like you want them to be a single paragraph for some reason so? here’s a solution: Follow the heading with a tab and then a forced line break (Shift-return/enter).

For example, here’s the original paragraph:

Inpara1

Now, here’s what we get when we put a Shift-Return/Enter (forced line break, or “soft return”) after the period instead of the space:

Inpara2

That obviously isn’t going to work! But if you put a tab character after the end of the heading (before the soft return) you get what (I think) you want:

Inpara3

You don’t need to set any tab stops or anything like that; the tab character itself is all you need.

Note that the bold heading could be formatted manually, but in this case I’m using a nested style or a line style inside the paragraph style.

I wish there were a way to automate this trick in a paragraph style, but you have to manually insert the tab character. (You might be able to find a way to insert it quickly with a find/change, though, depending on the formatting of your headings.)

Jeff Potter says:

November 6, 2012 at 10:30 am

Wouldn’t a Nested Style would work here beautifully? Define your bold heading Character Style up to one “.”.

Tina says:

November 6, 2012 at 12:31 pm

I do something similar when I want the last words of a left-aligned paragraph to align right, say for a credit at the end of a caption. After the last word of the text that you want to align left, enter a shift/tab. The rest of the text on that line will align right.

Bob Rubey says:

November 6, 2012 at 7:04 pm

You could also use Flush Space/Soft Return, but it really doesn’t improve anything since the tab key is much handier.

Quentin says:

November 7, 2012 at 1:58 am

Personally, I’d use a right-align tab (shift+tab) as a default, since it would work with any kind of alignment – who knows, someone may need this with a flush-right or even centered paragraph… And as Tina said it comes handy with right-aligned last words.

Tim Hughes says:

November 7, 2012 at 9:23 am

I don’t see the advantage of this over using a “hard” return and a separate style for a heading.

David Blatner says:

November 7, 2012 at 12:19 pm

@Tim: Um… I, too, would normally use two paragraphs; but people have all kinds of reasons, and in this case that was what Lisa needed.

dm says:

April 22, 2015 at 2:50 am

It’s slightly less work putting in a tab than having loads of separate paragraph styles.
I found this article really useful by the way. Thanks!

linaka says:

November 8, 2012 at 6:01 am

In this particular case I would have just used a hard return with a justify left. However if she needed to use the soft return then maybe there should be an added feature to InDesign to allow that?

Frances says:

November 21, 2012 at 3:12 pm

love this option. tx!

Bob Miller says:

December 25, 2012 at 4:14 pm

Nice article, David. Worked like a charm!

Terry Seale says:

August 23, 2013 at 9:04 am

UNFREAKIN’ BELIEVABLE!!!!!!!! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, I will pass this on to my students. Designing a 107 page magazine and was in a real bind. SO APPRECIATED!