InDesign Text Left Alignments

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Hi InDesign users.

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I’m Kelly, with Designer to full stack,

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and my videos span

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from Adobe products
to programing and coding.

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So wherever you fall in that spectrum,

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I’m sure you’ll find videos that help you
and what you’re doing.

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So today we’re looking at InDesign
specifically and text alignment, and I’m

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looking at left align text alignment
and the options that you have in InDesign.

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And this is actually a follow up video
to an older video

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where I was showing how I did left
alignment

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and a viewer said, hey, did you know
there’s an easier way to do this?

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And so I wanted to kind of demo why
you would use one method over the other

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and how they both can work in conjunction
with each other or be perfect

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for specific goals.

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All right.

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So in
InDesign we have a column of text here.

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And it is set in minion Pro
which is a serif font.

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And you’ll see that I have put
a few quotes into the ipsum text.

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So I’m going to go ahead and zoom
in for you.

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So you can see it
even a little bit better.

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All right.

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And right now the text and the quote,

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if it begins a sentence are aligned.

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So, designers
who are trained in typography

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like to do what we call
hanging indentation.

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So what that means is that hanging quotes,

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is these quote

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marks
would be to the left of where the text is.

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So they would actually be moved
into the margin.

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And InDesign, because it is set up

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to, layout books and magazines
and newspapers

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and columns of text know that designers
want these hanging quotation marks.

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And so we have this tool called story.

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You can open it by going to window

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and it is under.

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Let me get there.

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Type in tables and story okay.

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So window up at the top I’m sorry.

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It looks like my,

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I’m not showing that top bar
I should have, but it is under Window

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Type > Story.

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All right, so there’s only one option.

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There isn’t. Show more under story.

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It is really click
optical margin alignment.

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And when I click that
it defaults to 12 point.

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And you can see my quote mark is hanging

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now dependent on the font and the size
and all kinds of settings per font.

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12 point might be the perfect amount,
or it may not be.

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So in this case,
you can see it’s not perfectly aligned.

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The goal is that
my D would align with all the other text,

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and you can see
what are the things that it aligns.

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So number one story
optical margin alignment

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is going to have quote marks.

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Hang.

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It’s also going to have some serifs hang.

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So you can see the capital V.

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The top part of that serif is hanging out.

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And some letters that have curves
will also hang on this one.

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You can see that the a
that serif is hanging.

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So with this selected

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I’m going to go ahead and increase

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my point
until I find the one that actually has it

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optically aligned the best.

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And for me with the settings that I have,

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I feel like 18
is just about perfect there.

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Right?

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So the stem of that D is aligning
with the R.

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All right.

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So what that means is
if I put a paragraph break

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right here right.

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Those quotes are hanging outside as well.

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And you can see the C.

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Here’s a curve.

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So if I actually delete the quotes
you can see that

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the C is optically aligning
with our other letters as well.

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All right.

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So that’s when we use optical margin
alignment is when we are trying

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to align columns of text
to be visually optically aligned.

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All right.

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So now
we’re going to look at another example.

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All right so over here
I have all capital letters.

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And I have three examples of this text.

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So forge by the fearless.

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And you can see in this top example.

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That by default

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the apps are further
to the left than the B.

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So if this was a headline, let’s say,

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On a poster or something

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where I really wanted to be precise,
then I would want to move that B over.

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Right?

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I would want it
to be perfectly aligned as well.

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So your option
might be to look at your story.

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So if we go into story.

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and I click optical margin

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alignment, it moves them all.

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And in this case

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you can see
that they are really pretty aligned.

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Right. So that’s beautiful.

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So one of the uses is you can start

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with optical margin alignment
and see if it aligns it.

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Now let’s say our headline
with the second one.

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And we’re aligning the F and the T.

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So I can see that right now
without optical margin alignment

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the F is not perfectly aligned with the T,

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although the T does hang over to the edge.

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So if I put optical margin alignment
it does hang more.

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But you can see it is not perfect.

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If I try to adjust it.

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It’s not really doing much right.

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And if I go down.

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We’re still not getting anything.

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So here’s an example
of where it’s not precise.

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And I would want to go in
and manually move it as well.

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And so this would not be across
lots of columns.

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But this would be
for a very specific headline

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that I want to be perfectly aligned.

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So in this case I can use
the, left margin.

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Now let’s see here.

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This first one.

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Right.

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And so I’m moving just the first line.

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And you can see if I use the arrows,
it jumps all the way to 0.0625.

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But maybe I just need it to be one.

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Right.

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And maybe I need it to be 0.15.

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And so that is a way that I can use both

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to manually get a perfect alignment.

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Right.

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So that would be a use case.

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Now in this case

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I have all capitals and hanging quotes.

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So if I click optical margin alignment

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it aligns one quote, not both.

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So in this case again
I probably want both hanging.

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So I would select them
and I could manually.

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Move them.

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Now I’m moving into the margin.

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So when I want to go negative it’s

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saying it’s an invalid indent value.

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So the first thing I’m going to have to do
is move everything in.

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And then I can do the exact opposite out.

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So whatever I am going in

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with this left margin, then I need to.

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And if you try to go too much
this next time, it will tell me too far.

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You cannot extend outside the text frame.

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Right.

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Okay, so now

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I have perfectly aligned

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and we can pull a ruler over and see here.

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Okay.

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So this is how you use
both story and indents.

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And so when you have your text selected
in the text box

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you are going to be given up here
at the top you’re align left align center.

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Let’s say you have align left.

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Then you’re going to have your left indent
and also your first line left indent.

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And so by adjusting
all your text to be left indented,

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you can then use negative to pull out
and have hanging quotes

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or to better align any of your letters.

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And I feel like the use case for
that is specifically really for headlines,

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whether that a poster,
the cover of a book,

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a headline or subheadline
in a magazine article,

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that’s where you’re wanting to be precise
with your alignment, and especially

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when it’s capital letters, even more,
visible when it’s not quite aligned.

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All right.

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So I hope this combination
of indenting and optical

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margin alignment
help you in your InDesign endeavors.

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If you found this useful, please
make sure to like or comment or subscribe!

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I look forward to getting
to share more tips

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with you and, be with you on your journey

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as you increase your skills
as the designer and programmer.