Chapter Title Strategies
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- This topic has 5 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 7 months ago by
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In my quest for total automation, I'm looking for the best practice for starting a chapter. In most books I produce, there is a chapter number, followed by a chapter title, sometimes then by a quote with a byline, and finally by a body-first (and then of course body, body, etc.)
My question is really about the best way to position the chapter number some distance down the page. Logically, I would use the chapter number paragraph style, and just set the Space Before to whatever I want, but Space Before is not honored if it's the first para in the text frame.
Also, I need to reflow the book now and then (the author is never quite done), so I want to have chapter titles on the same master page as the main text. As a result, I end up setting the frame baseline to LEADING, for the main text portion of the book. There seems no other obvious way to get the gap at the top (other than ways which would have to get fixed if the chapter moves around in the story).
A similar problem involves the running head on pages with chapter titles. I'd like to avoid manually reapplying the body master page whenever a chapter moves a few pages, and manually deleting the running head on all the pages where chapters start. That's not so bad the first time, but if revisions keep coming in, reflow keeps happening, and I end up repeatedly scanning for moved chapter title so I can fix them all by hand. It's an error-prone approach, and it seems an odd and obscure way to do something so common.
Finally (and somewhat unrelated), a tip that might be helpful to someone:
I use (in some books with long or odd chapter titles) what might be an odd technique for handling TOC entries. Instead of linking the TOC entries to the Chapter Title paragraph style, I create a new paragraph style called Hidden Chapter Title. I use red text, a very small font, and zero leading (with zero Space After). This comes just after the Paragraph Title.
This style allows me to edit a new chapter title that conforms to special TOC requirements (e.g., all short titles, or special encoded titles that differ from the chapter's title page). In some cases this is also used for the recto running head. Once the book is ready, I just set the Hidden Chapter Title color to None, and they disappear without affecting the flow.
Anyway, I would love to hear about other folks' approach to handling chapter title pages.
Thanks in advance,
Allen
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Regarding vertical positioning: Use a Rule Above, with a color of None and a good distance in Vertical Offset, and switch “Keep In Frame” on to offset a first paragraph on a page. Works every time.
As for hiding a running header, rather than shift-click and deleting it (deprecated, actually) or applying another master page (which personally I prefer, and I take re-applying them for granted), you could use this extremely Dirty Trick. (Hold on to your seat.) In addition to your Rule Above, also define a Rule Below. Set its color to Paper and its thickness to +/- 12 pts — do not opt to Keep it In Frame. Then move it upwards with a negative Vertical Offset to cover the running header.
You might need to apply this style on the occasional left-hand blank page as well, if you start everything on a right hand page. If you have page numbers at the bottom, you can make a specialized “blank page” style, where you use the Rule Above (without Keep In Frame) to hide stuff on the top, and Rule Below to hide the bottom things.
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Great ideas! Thanks for these. I was thinking too literally inside the box. I use rules for various creative things already, but I had not thought of this. It's slightly outrageous to move a paragraph rule inches away, outside the text frame, but why not? No style police around here. Using BOTH rules to achieve positioning and to blank the running head is sheer genius, if you don't mind my saying so.
Brilliant. Thanks again,
Allen
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Assuming your text is reflowing because you're editing it in InDesign rather than reimporting the text, I'd split the chapters into separate stories (using Rorohiko's TextStitch plugin) and use Auto Text Flow to add new pages to the end of each chapter as it's edited. This allows you to have separate master pages for first page and main text, and if you alter the top margin on the first page master to get the chapter number in the right place, you can use Layout Adjustment to automagically snap the text frame to the margins as you apply the master page (if you ever need to). This method also preserves any section starts you might be using.
Of course, this doesn't help if you're replacing the text of the whole document in a single file.
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FWIW, If you really want total automation, you might want to check out AutoFlow Pro.
AutoFlow Pro has the ability to automatically apply the correct master pages while the text is flowed (or reflowed) using standard (non-master) text frames, and/or custom positioned master frames. You can even do virtual threading across different masters. This allows for a tremendous amount of freedom of how the text flows. Once a document is set up once, it's “set and forget” functionality.
Additionally, Power Headers has the ability to keep your headers from not appearing on a chapter opener page, so if the only reason you have an additonal master is to prevent the headers from appearing on those pages, Power Headers can make the extra master page redundant.
Sorry for the shameless plug… ;)
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To avoid chapter specific master pages, whenever possible, I use the Type Variable function to do this work automatically for me. Setting up a variable in the running head and tagging it to match the Chapter Title style sheet works perfectly. Often my running heads are comprised of variables that contain part title, part number, chapter name, and chapter number. Type Variables can also work perfectly for automated glossary running heads.
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