The Case of the Text on Top of the Frame Contest Answer and Winner

Mike Rankin

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It’s time to reveal the solution—and the winner—for this month’s InDesignSecrets contest!

Here’s the scenario: 

You open an InDesign document and immediately notice something odd. On one of the text frames, the first line of text is sitting not inside the frame, but directly on top of it.

The text has not been baseline shifted or superscripted.

If you delete the first line, the next line moves up to the top of the frame.

If you copy and paste the first line into a new text frame, it sits inside the frame.

Why is the first line of text sitting on top of the frame and not inside it?

The answer is that someone set the Text Frame Options First Baseline Offset to Fixed with a Minimum value of zero.

This puts the first baseline of text exactly at the top of the frame. So if you delete the first line of text, the next one moves up to take its place. And since this is an attribute of the frame and not the text, if you copy and paste the text to another frame with different Baseline Options, the first line won’t sit on top of the frame.

As some of you noted in your contest entries, Fixed Offset allows you to control the placement of the first line of text (and maintain alignment of text in different frames) in a way that’s always independent of the font, point size, or leading. And increasing the Offset value moves text down in the frame.

And the winner of this contest is…

Aurélie Gunter

Aurélie wins 3 months access to videos of any 2 days of CreativePro Week 2018.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and be on the lookout for another contest with a new great prize next month!