There are certain typographical mistakes that stand out like a sore thumb in columns of type. Some examples – the first line of a paragraph sitting all by itself at the bottom of a column, or the last line of a paragraph sitting at the top of the next column, or my favorite, a subhead sitting at the bottom of a column with no copy under it. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could format your running text in a way that these problems will be avoided automatically.
That’s where “Keep Options” come in. Look under the Options menu of the Paragraph palette for “Keep Options” and in the dialog window that opens, you can specify in the “Keep with Next” section, a minimum number of lines from the next paragraph that a paragraph, such as a subhead, will be followed by in a column. Or in the “Keep Lines Together” section, you can specify the minimum number of lines that a paragraph can have at the bottom or top of a page or column. Or you can even choose to keep all lines in a paragraph together in the same column or on the same page. The best part is that all this formatting can be part of a Paragraph Style to help you avoid typographic catastrophes throughout your layout.
Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Certified Adobe® Training Provider.
Author: jeff witchel
Jeff Witchel graduated from Pratt Institute in 1973 with a B.F.A. (Cum Laude) in Advertising Design and Visual Communications. He has been an award-winning advertising art director, writer, designer, illustrator, and TV producer ever since.
Before starting his own advertising agency in New Jersey, Jeff built his career at top New York ad agencies such as Young & Rubicam, Grey Advertising, and Wells, Rich, Greene. Over the years, he has created award-winning work for many clients including AT&T, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Jell-O Pudding, The Plaza Hotel, and Pfizer. His many prestigious awards include N.Y. Art Directors Club Gold Award, One Show Gold Award, N.J. Art Directors Club Award, multiple Andy Awards, Graphis Annual, numerous readership awards, plus an Emmy Award nomination.
Jeff is a self-taught computer artist with over 19 years of experience. His initial introduction to the computer was with PageMaker, but he switched to Quark 1.0 when it was first introduced in 1987. Having arrived on the desktop publishing scene so early, Jeff became the “go to” guy for answers when others started getting into computer graphics.
As an Adobe Certified Expert, he’s provided online support for Adobe and is now an Adobe Certified Training Provider for both Adobe Illustrator CS2 and Adobe InDesign CS2. Jeff is one of just a handful of Adobe Certified Instructors in the New York metropolitan area. He also is a Quark Certified Expert in QuarkXPress 6 as well as a master of Adobe Photoshop and related applications. He counts among his training clients ad agencies, design studios, magazines, illustrators, and photographers in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
