Bad Typesetting

[Marek Williams]

Now using CS. I have bitched about this since 1.0 and it still is not
fixed.

When an em-dash or en-dash occurs in text -- like in this sentence,
and the dash occurs at the end of the line, InDesign does its
damnedest to move it to the start of the next line, even leaving a big
empty space at the end of the line.

Everyone knows that starting a line with an em-dash or an en-dash (for
those who follow Bringhurst) is bad form. Why does InDesign continue
to do this? I'm getting tired of having to scan through the document
manually do a manual No Break every time I see a dash in the left edge
of the text block.

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[Craig Smith]

Marek Williams wrote:

>When an em-dash or en-dash occurs in text -- like in this sentence,
>and the dash occurs at the end of the line, InDesign does its
>damnedest to move it to the start of the next line, even leaving a big
>empty space at the end of the line.
>
>Everyone knows that starting a line with an em-dash or an en-dash (for
>those who follow Bringhurst) is bad form. Why does InDesign continue
>to do this? I'm getting tired of having to scan through the document
>manually do a manual No Break every time I see a dash in the left edge
>of the text block.

The problem is that you're using the em-dash incorrectly. A proper
em-dash does NOT have a space before or after it. If you remove the
spaces before and after your em-dash, you'll see that InDesign won't
allow an em-dash to either end a line or begin it; it rearranges the
layout so that the dash is surrounded by text on both sides.

If, however, you insist on space/em-dash/space, instead of scanning
the text visually and then manually entering your No Breaks, you can
simply do this find-and-replace:

Find what: ^_
Change to: ^_^s

This changes the space following your em-dash to a non-breaking space
throughout your story or document.

..:. Craig

[Marek Williams]

On Sun, 11 Jul 2004 18:03:28 GMT, Craig Smith <craig@smithcraft.org>
dijo:

>The problem is that you're using the em-dash incorrectly. A proper
>em-dash does NOT have a space before or after it. If you remove the
>spaces before and after your em-dash, you'll see that InDesign won't
>allow an em-dash to either end a line or begin it; it rearranges the
>layout so that the dash is surrounded by text on both sides.

Well, actually, I use the en-dash, not the em-dash. And I follow
Bringhurst 95% of the time, and he disagrees with you. I keep me copy
on the shelf behind me, and he uses nothing but en-dash with spaces. I
do realize that newspapers and magazines in the U.S. use the em-dash,
not the en-dash, and leave out the spaces. But most books use spaces,
and I do books, not magazines. And with the en-dash spaces definitely
look better.

And besides, it is clear that someone at Adobe deliberately programmed
InDesign to move the en-dash to the next line whenever at all
possible. That is just plain wrong.

>If, however, you insist on space/em-dash/space, instead of scanning
>the text visually and then manually entering your No Breaks, you can
>simply do this find-and-replace:
>
>Find what: ^_
>Change to: ^_^s
>
>This changes the space following your em-dash to a non-breaking space
>throughout your story or document.

Ah! Had to change it for the en-dash, and you had the ^s at the end
when it needed to be at the front, but after figuring it out, it works
great. Thanks for the idea!

--
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