Why Am I Seeing Yellow Highlighting on My Text?
Dave wrote:
Much of the stuff I do requires headlines or subheads IN ALL CAPS. I make a paragraph style using the Case: All Caps setting in the Paragraph Style Dialog box. This will make the text all-caps but then mark each word in yellow highlighting as if it were a substituted glyph issue!
It has been a while since we tackled the dreaded highlighting “problem.” I put the word in quotes because it turns out it’s usually not a problem at all, but it can certainly freak you out if you don’t know what’s going on.
Every so often, you’ll find documents in which text is highlighted in a dark yellow — not all the text, but a little bit here and a little bit there. Usually all the “fi” and “fl” ligatures are highlighted; sometimes whole words that are in all caps or small caps. The reason: Substituted Glpyhs is turned on the Composition pane of the Preferences dialog box:
Substituted glyphs means any character in the text which is being substituted for something else; so you’ll always get it with ligatures and formatting in which a lower case character is swapped out for a capital or small cap.
This is a document preference rather than an application preference; that is, if you turn it on when a document is open, just that one document remembers the change. But it also means that you can open a document from someone else and see it (because they turned it on). Here’s an example:
So should you panic? Rebuild your preferences? Reinstall the entire Creative Suite? Buy a new computer? Sure! Though of course none of those things will make the yellow go away. Instead, I suggest you just turn off the Substituted Glyphs checkbox, take a deep breath, and know that substituted glyphs are not a big deal in InDesign. :)
For more on composition highlighting in preferences, check out Anne-Marie’s excellent post from a while back.
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I’ve noticed that the substituted glyphs setting is enabled on InDesign documents when Q2ID was used for QuarkXPress to InDesign document conversion.
I never thought about it before, Cari, but you’re right. I’ve seen that, too. I think it leaves the text wrap only effects text beneath option enabled also.
@Bob yup, you’re right… Also issue with Super/Subscript size (going from memory here, it’s been just over a year since I last ran a Quark to InDesign conversion project with one of our regional newspapers)
Thanks for the guide. It cleared my long time question. I have one more doubt on this. Is there any possibility to change the highlight color (i.e., Yellow color)?
please remove the yellow lettering and the black background
T H A N K Y O U ! ! ! I was going CRAZY!!!
Love it! I have a new career as a Graphic Designer, thanks to your courses on Lynda.com, David! I am so thankful for all the tips you continue to share. Have a great day!
Thank you Jothish! Happy InDesigning!
Just wondering where I find preferences and composition to make the fix?
Thank you. In my 15+ years I haven’t seen that one before.
Thank you so much… I love InDesignSecrets.com!
maybe theres yellow on mine – clear it
turning our backs into one another
we´re going to nowhere
lets´s face the problema
turn it when is possible
Why is the text in my inbox blacked out? The new unread is in white.
Everything is very open with a precise description of the challenges.
It was really informative. Your site is extremely helpful.
Thank you for sharing!
Thanks so much:)
OK, That is not the problem, my substituted glyphs box is not checked. I have yellow highlighted lines of text some pale yellow, some saturated yellow. complete lines are highlighted, not partial lines or individual words. not necessarily complete sentences.
What does it mean?