Running Header Issue

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    • #75639
      Rivkah Lewis
      Member

      I am typesetting a book of stories. As the footer, I have left pages with the name of the book next to the page number and right pages with the name of the story next to the page number.
      Some of the story titles are long and have a soft return in the middle so that they sit on 2 lines.
      Here’s one example – (probably the longest one…)
      How Rav Chaim Brisker
      Saved Georgian Jewry
      So there is a soft return between “Brisker” and “Saved”.
      In the running header, there is a double space between those two words. I looked and saw there was a space between Brisker and Saved so I deleted it. What then happens is that on the first page of the story, the footer says How Rav Chaim Brisker Saved Georgian Jewry with one space between Brisker and Saved and on the subsequent pages, there is no space. When I add the space back in, there is a double space ont he first page the footer appears and a single space on subsequent pages.

      What is going on??

      Any help would be appreciated.

    • #75640
      Rivkah Lewis
      Member

      I’d like to add that this only occurs when the story starts on a right page – the page of the story name footer.
      When it begins on a left page, the facing right page as proper spacing.

      I thought of putting a text box half off the page but touching with the title without any soft returns in it as the settings are set to first on page, but I was wondering if there was an easy fix that’s not a “cheat”.

      Thanks.

    • #75644
      Eugene Tyson
      Member

      I use a No Break to break lines like that.

    • #75645
      Rivkah Lewis
      Member

      Thanks for the reply, Eugene. Can you clarify a little what you mean?
      An why this would only be an issue on some pages in the same chapter and not all?

    • #75646
      Eugene Tyson
      Member

      I think it’s a limitation of the software.

      Rather than inserting a soft break, insert the cursor from your break point, and then select the text to the end.

      In the Paragraph Panel there is an option to choose No Break.

      Choose No Break from the Character panel menu or the Control panel menu.

      Another Option might be to choose the Balance Ragged Lines from the Paragraph Panel

    • #75647

      Agree with what Eugene said. I noticed this problem years ago, and I either use the no-break feature, or if that is not enough, I manually increase the left and right indents to force words down.

    • #75653
      Ariel Walden
      Member

      To me it sounds like you have a couple of master pages, and you simply forgot to edit away the space on one of the master pages but not on the other. If it is a bug, it’s not one I’ve ever encountered.

    • #75659
      Rivkah Lewis
      Member

      Eugene: Thank you – that was mega-helpful.
      Dwayne: That was my next idea. Thanks!
      Ariel: Thanks for your contribution, put perhaps you did not understand the problem properly. My doc only has one Master and even if it did, the issue had to do with a soft-return in the title, not anything related to a Master. I’ve been using ID for nearly a decade and I’ve never come across this either, so I guess you come across new things every day…

      Thank you again!

      • #75660

        I’m glad your problem is solved. As a note–I’ve been using InDesign since 1.5, and when the running head variables came out (I forget which version) I noticed the problem. But what I was getting was the space would go to the end of the runninghead. I was wondering how I was getting an extra space between the running head and the folio, and figured out it was the soft return.

    • #75665
      Rivkah Lewis
      Member

      What I still can’t figure out is why the title was OK in some footers and not in others…

      • #75667

        I’d have the same issue, Rivkah. Some pages would be fine. The majority, though, were wrong (sometimes even in the same chapter). And I would have other chapters that would be perfectly okay. Maybe something to do with whether the chapter opener started on a left or right page?

    • #75668
      Rivkah Lewis
      Member

      In this case, it most certainly had to do with that.
      At least there’s a work around!

    • #75670
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      InDesign’s running header feature is not the strongest. For many people (especially if you have heads that are tricky or require 2 or more lines) I recommend Power Headers https://in-tools.com/products/plugins/power-headers/

    • #75682
      Rivkah Lewis
      Member

      Thanks, David.

      One thing I’ve kinda wondered over the years is why can’t ID have all these cool plugins etc. packaged in. The people in Adobe ought to be smart enough to make all these things work, no?

    • #98303
      Gopa Campbell
      Participant

      Eugene and Dwayne, Thanks for this! I’ve had this niggly problem that I could never figure out: Why does Indesign keep adding a space to the end of some of my running heads when I didn’t have an ending space tagged with the running head variable character style? This has fixed it and I am delighted.

    • #101319

      Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but searching the web if there are any new ‘cheats’ to this problem that persists through InDesign iterations I ended up here.

      I don’t encounter this problem often in my work, but when I do it’s driving me absolutely mad. The variable that is on the left hand pages usually tends to put that extra space at the end of the text and can be eliminated with the ‘delete end punctuation’ option. The ones on the right behave as described above.

      Does anyone have an understanding why this soft return thing behaves in this particular way? Is it extremely hard to fix for the Adobe engineers or is it just overlooked since it’s rather minor?

      I figure that if I get to understand it a bit, it will help with my anger management on this problem. :)

    • #104359

      I have noticed this issue for a while and had been using paragraph indents left & right to force-break text, but that was not always the best fix. Eugene’s suggestion to apply the “No Break” setting (it’s now under the Text palette in CC2018) was a great solution. And something I can use elsewhere as well. Thanks Eugene!

    • #115986

      You could also put the header in its own text block and shorten the width of the text block to break the line instead of using a soft return.

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