Justified text flow - IDCS2

[Kain_Glover@adobeforums.com]

I had a good search but couldn't come up with any info.

A couple of years ago I went to the Adobe roadshow (debut of CS1), and they talked about an awesome new feature where you can flow/space justified text really nicely without getting horrible gaps and hyphens like in the past.

Under 'paragrah styles', I found Hyphenation', which looks familiar, but I dont want hyphens all through the publication. Would I just tick this box on and slide the bar to the far right 'fewer hypens'?? I imagine the spacing would still be bad If I did this, and there would still be the odd hyphen?

Any other good ways to space justified text evenly and consistently without having hyphens?

I Keep getting tight lines of text (looks like one big word).

Im using 50mm columns, 9pt text, 13pt leading, not aligned to baseline grid.

Any help, or links to somewhere that could help me would be appreciated.

[Fred_Goldman@adobeforums.com]

Go into the paragraph styles dialog box and click justificaion on the left hand bar.

First of all make sure you have under composer "Adobe Paragraph Composer".

Now if your lines are still too tight, under Word Spacing put up the percentages a little higher.

[Kain_Glover@adobeforums.com]

Cool, thanks for that.

Overall I'm looking for consistancy. While in the long run tight lines of text look worse than slightly 'gappy' spaced out lines, I want consistant spacing , and dont want to have to much around with each spread individually.

Cheers.

[Fred_Goldman@adobeforums.com]

You're mixing up pallets with dialog boxes. If you double-click the name of a paragraph style you will get the paragraph styles dialog box.

[Kain_Glover@adobeforums.com]

Ahh, sorry about that.

Cheers for the help.

[Kain_Glover@adobeforums.com]

Ok, thought i'd include this, pretty basic but others may find it useful.

I'm using a three column grid (50mm each) with 8mm gap between (light stroke serparating columns).

In the paragraph styles dialog box, under justification > word spacing. The default spacing is set to 80% - 100% - 133%.

I found setting it to 95% - 100% - 133% made all the difference, eliminating the majority of text heavy lines without making it to gappy.

Obviously if you're running different columns widths to me, your settings would have to be altered to suit.

[Fred_Goldman@adobeforums.com]

Glad to hear you got it worked out.

Keep in mind, every font is a little different, so what may be the perfect setting for one, might not look right for another.

[Dominic_Hurley@adobeforums.com]

> Any other good ways to space justified text evenly and consistently without having hyphens?

To get the best out of the paragraph composer and to get the most even spacing possible in justified text (especially with short measures), you have to use hyphens. Is there any reason you want to avoid them? Hyphens don't pose any problems for most readers, and they're a lot less ugly then uneven spacing (which is said to effect readability). You do need to keep an eye out for bad breaks but that's not too much of an issue.

[Nini Tjäder]

If you want to use hyphens or not depends on the width of the columns, the size of the text (fontsize) and the values you choose for how many hyphens in a row you allow there to be, if text is justified or not and so on. In some texts hyphens is not what you want, in other texts it is OK and in yet others it is not. In combination with paragraph composer values, manual kerning/tracking on top of that, and even manual hyphenation where needed in longer words of course. As I see it ;)

[Dominic_Hurley@adobeforums.com]

Sure, if you want to use hyphens or not is up to you, but the fact remains that if you want to get the most even spacing possible in justified text you have to be prepared to break words. Kain asked whether there are "any other good ways to space justified text evenly and consistently without having hyphens?" Some people like to use letterspacing and glyph scaling (I don't), but even if you do use these features, they're not going to give you results anywhere near those available through hyphenation. So, to my mind, the answer to Kane's question is no.

[Unregistered]

Hi I'd really like some help with this. I am currently doing a typographic poster for a University project and hyphens would look unprofessional and ugly on the poster! But I am seriously struggling with how to evenly justify my text boxes. I want even perfect blocks but it's just not happening! Help!