Useful InDesign Tips for Making Books

I’m making this post primary for myself.  When figuring out how to make a long-form book in InDesign I had to look up a bunch of different things.  I decided I would write this post as a reference for myself.

Replace Missing Fonts (or Fix Italic Issues)

If you switch fonts, and your new font family doesn’t have an variation called italic, your italics will all show up with red highlights.

To fix this, click Type > Find/Replace Fonts...

menu showing Find Replace Fonts.

Then choose the font in question, and click the drop-down to change the font.

find replace font dialog box.

Add Space Around Chapter Headings

Sometimes you’ll want to put some space above or below your chapter headings.

There are a couple ways to add space above the Chapter titles in “paragraph rules”.  See the screenshot for details.

screenshot highlighting how to add space to the paragraphs.

For more information read about the Invisible Rule Trick.  And read “Starting Chapter Text at a Fixed Position on the Page”.

Automatically add as many pages as needed

Nobody wants to manually make hundreds of pages with textboxes.  All you need to do is hold shift as do the text reflow.  Watch this video for more information.

 

Avoid Widows and Orphans

This tutorial “3 Ways to Fix Runts in Your Text” shows a pretty good trick that adds a “no wrap” style to the last 10 characters or so.

Basically, you make a character style named “no wrap” (or whatever you want to name it).  Then check “No Break” under the “Basic Character Formats” tab.

screenshot showing how to make a no wrap character style.

Then edit your paragraph style.  Click the GREP style tab.  Then add  .{10}$ as the expression.

Watch this video for a detailed walk through.

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