Hanging punctuation in various applications.
About once a month, a client will ask how to hang punctuation in Adobe InDesign CS. We've answered this same question dozens of times -- yet I still find myself hunting around through menus to remember which dialog box contains the needed checkbox!
This tip covers hanging punctuation techniques in Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Freehand MX, and QuarkXPress.
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Hanging punctuation in Adobe InDesign CS.
Select your text and turn on Optical Margin Alignment in InDesign's Story palette (Choose Type > Story).
And yes, we agree, this seems like a non-intuiative place to hide this feature. Especially considering this appears to be the only story-related setting in InDesign.
Tip: The font size option controls the amount of overhang applied. For optimal results, use the same size as your text.
Hanging punctuation in Adobe Illustrator CS.
Select your text and choose Type > Optical Margin Alignment.
Hanging punctuation in Freehand MX.
Select your text box, choose the paragraph icon in the Object Properties palette, and turn on the Hanging punctuation checkbox.
Hanging punctuation in QuarkXPress.
QuarkXPress has no automatic way (that we know of) to accomplish hanging punctuation; it’s a hands-on process and requires a bit of work:
- Put a space before a quote mark.
- Move your cursor between the space and mark.
- Use negative kerning to move the mark and text back until the first text character lines up with the left edge of the rest of the text.
- When the punctuation is negatively-kerned out, as it crosses the edge of the text box it disappears. It does, however, print.
Source: This tip inspired by a recent phone troubleshooting call with CreativeTechs' priority support client Herrick Design. The QuarkXPress technique for hanging punctuation comes from this article on Designorati.
Comments
Thank you SO MUCH! I knew that InDesign did this, but I could not find it for the life of me, and I searched both the program and two books I have.
Finally! You guys rock!
Posted by: Sara Chapman | October 1, 2006 10:34 PM
Hi, I want to type in a number of bullets items each with a row or 2 of text and then line it up on an unconventional margin that is on an angle, or even a margin that is a convex or concave line ie. A margin that is only 2" from the top left, but maybe 5" from the bottom left. I have been trying to do this in illustrator and freehand. Can you help?
Posted by: Hereward | November 3, 2006 11:00 PM
There's a much much easier way to hang punctuation in InDesign.
Using the text provided in the example, "God is subtle but he is not malicious," do this:
* Place your cursor after the initial quotation mark.
* Use the keyboard shortcut Command (apple) + \ (the backslash key)
* Alternately you can position the cursor and go to menu Type >> Special Character >> Indent to Here
* Voila!! Hanging indentation. You can use this for bulleted lists too.
Posted by: Kate | November 22, 2006 09:06 AM