Text Frames & Text Frame Options

We can exercise a great deal of control over how our content looks before we even adjust any typographic options (leading, kerning, and such). For more on typographic features, see chapter 3 of the Compendium, “Styles, Type & Fonts” (page 235).

The options under discussion here are adjusted without having to use the Type tool at all. To judge some of these features, you may wish to have some content to play with. Draw a text frame with the Type tool, then right-click and choose Fill with Placeholder Text. Don’t like it? Undo, then do it again. It’ll be randomly different each time.

Linking Text Frames

One continuous flow of text is called a story. Often, that story flows from one frame to another. When it does, we say that the story is threaded among linked text frames. When you have (or expect) more text than can fit into one text frame, InDesign offers many ways to thread that story. If you already have more content than fits (called overset text), its frame’s out port turns red and shows a plus sign.

The method you choose for threading a story will depend on whether you already have frames into which to flow the text. It also matters if you need more pages to accommodate all the content. Most methods start with clicking on the out port of an existing text frame with the Selection tool. Clicking an out port “loads” the cursor. Depending on where you move that cursor, you may see its appearance change to indicate its behavior. Holding down modifier keys also can change its look and behavior. Here are some of your choices:

Manual Text Flow

When the loaded cursor is not over an existing frame, it exhibits a squared-off corner. Simply drag diagonally to create a new text frame; it will link to the first one automatically. You should also see a line that connects the in port of the new frame to the out port of the first one. If you do not, be sure that you are not in Preview Mode. You may also need to go to View > Extras > Show Text Threads.

If you hover the loaded cursor over another existing text frame, the cursor will show a link icon (a chain). Clicking within that text frame will link the two frames together. If you hover over an unassigned frame or shape, the cursor will show an icon that looks somewhat like text enclosed in parentheses. Clicking will convert that shape or frame into a text frame and link it to the first one.

Semiautomatic Text Threading

If you need to thread multiple frames together, it becomes tedious to repeatedly click on out ports to reload the cursor. Instead, if you hold down the option/Alt key when you make or click in a frame, that frame will be linked to the previous one and your cursor will be reloaded so you can continue onto the next one.

Automatic Text Threading

A common scenario: in an InDesign document with only one or very few pages, your cursor is loaded with potentially dozens of pages of text (maybe you are placing a text file). Clicking in the upper-left margin of an empty page creates a text frame as big as the margins. You could manually create more pages, click out ports, and flow text from page to page. A better solution is to hold the shift key when clicking on that first page’s upper-left margin. Shift-clicking will create not only the first frame, but more pages as well, each with a frame as large as its margins, until all the text has flowed!

Fixed Page Text Threading

This method is similar to automatic text threading, but is better in situations where you have a fixed page limit. Holding down option-shift/alt-shift will create frames on the pages that already exist, but will not add more pages.

Scaled Text Preferences

As mentioned in the discussion of preferences, there’s a way to know the original size of type after it has been scaled with its frame. This setting called Adjust Scaling Percentage, is found in the General preferences (⌘-K/Ctrl-K). If chosen, when a text frame is enlarged by 50%, for example, it will show a scaling of 150% in the Control panel ever after, making it easy to set it back to 100% if needed. If the text size had started at 10 points, it will read which can be confusing. If you liked the new frame size, but wanted the text to be 10 points again, you might have to set it to 6 2/3 points (1.5 x 6 2/3 = 10)! This is not worth the trouble. The few times I’ve resized a text frame arbitrarily was for unique items like book titles. I have never needed the original size or later cared what it was.

Text Frame Options

A small number of text frame options can be adjusted via the Control panel. The rest require the Text Frame Options dialog box, which is opened by choosing Object > Text Frame Options…. A shortcut for that exists, too: ⌘-B/Ctrl-B.

Columns

Any text frame can have multiple columns. The number of columns can be set in a couple places: the Control panel, the Properties panel, or via the Text Frame Options dialog box. You can also set column width parameters.

Fixed Number

Choose a number of columns and a gutter (space between columns), and InDesign will divide the frame evenly and calculate a width for each column. If you enter a width, the frame’s width will change to accommodate it. However, this column width value is a bit fugitive: change the width of the frame, and InDesign will adjust the column widths again to divide the frame evenly. If you need a column with a fixed width, choose…

Fixed Width

Now if you manually adjust the frame’s width, it will snap to whole-column widths. For example, if you start with a three-column frame with two-inch wide columns and then attempt to widen the frame just a little, it will suddenly grow a bit more than two full inches wider (the column width plus a new gutter).

Inset Spacing

Inset pushes the text inward, away from the frame’s edges. Note the chain in the center of these fields. When intact, it ensures all the values remain equal. If disabled, each value can be unique. Use inset when you add a stroke or fill color to your text frame. I also use inset for captions that abut an image to yield a predictable amount of space between the image and the words.

Vertical Justification

When the text doesn’t cover the full depth (height) of a frame, you can choose where the text is positioned vertically within the frame. The sensible default is Top. The other choices can be useful, too. When you change this to Bottom, the last baseline will fall along the bottom edge of the frame (assuming there is no inset).

Center will attempt to give as much space above the text as below it. Do you see the page number above? It’s in a frame as tall as the page’s top margin, but it has center vertical justification applied to center it in that margin. The same is true of page headers. Easy centering with no arithmetic!

Justify will put the top line’s ascenders at the top of the frame, and the last line’s baseline at the bottom. Leading throughout will be adjusted to evenly divide the space between lines. If you choose Justify, you may also enter a value for Paragraph Spacing Limit. This will force InDesign to first add space after each paragraph in the frame (up to the specified limit). Once that limit is reached, leading is added to each line to justify the text top to bottom. If the Paragraph Spacing Limit is very large, InDesign will use paragraph spacing exclusively and you will avoid any leading alteration at all.

Baseline Options

First Baseline Offset

You can choose where the first baseline of your text is relative to the top of the frame. Doing so can make it easier to have content align pleasantly across columns or pages.

Ascent is the default. The first baseline is as far down from the top of the frame as an ascender is tall. That is, any ascenders in the first line just kiss the top of the frame. However, since capital (uppercase) letters are typically shorter than ascenders, alignment between such a frame and another may not look correct. Thus, a caption frame next to an image may appear better aligned with its image if we choose…

Cap Height, in which the caps perfectly touch the top edge of the frame. I usually reserve this for stand-alone frames.

Leading is the setting used for the text frame you’re reading right now. When combined with well-calculated leading, we can best ensure that text aligns with an underlying baseline grid (below). If it’s difficult to guarantee that the first line will have a leading value consistent with the baseline grid (odd-sized headers, perhaps), then Fixed may be appropriate.

x-Height, like Cap Height, is best used with stand-alone frames with no caps in the first line.

Fixed, combined with a Min value equal to your baseline grid setting, helps keep text flowing along that grid.

Baseline Grid

The Text Frame Options dialog box offers you a chance to apply a Custom Baseline Grid to specific text frames. Although I seldom do so, this affords a good opportunity to discuss how to use baseline grids generally.

The Baseline Grid preference settings are document-specific and create virtual lines along which your text’s baselines can run. Choose InDesign CC > Preferences > Grids (on a Mac)/Edit > Preferences > Grids (on Windows) to set these. You can force your text to align to the grid with “Paragraph Styles” (page 242), or they may be aspirational—that is, it’s on you to ensure the leading you apply to your text lands the text on this grid if you want it to.

The settings for the following example document are:

Color: Light Blue Because I was too lazy to change it.

Start: 54 pt That’s how far from the top of the page my primary text frame is.

Relative To: Top of Page Other choice is Top Margin, but in my case, my primary text frames are located a bit higher than my top margin. Thus, I measure from the page edge.

Increment Every: 14 pt This is my fundamental leading. Larger headers may have twice this value, or use Space Before or Space After equaling a multiple of this value.

View Threshold: 75% If I zoom out sufficiently (below 75% in this document), the grid lines disappear. This is good, as they’d be overwhelmingly dense at that point.

Auto-Size

This is an option for stand-alone text frames (not threaded to others). The setting I use most frequently is illustrated here: allowing only the height to change (to maintain column width), keeping the top edge fixed.

For frames that contain a very short phrase (such as a headline or title), allowing both dimensions to change may work well, especially if you disallow line breaks (the last checkbox).

The nicest thing about this feature is that it prevents text from becoming overset. It’s disturbing to find the last words of a caption missing when something’s gone to press!

I also appreciate a frame’s shrinking to prevent extraneous parts of it from dangling where it might get selected accidentally with other items.

Footnotes

This allows footnotes of a particular text frame to span across the frame’s columns. Also, you may specify some space that appears around those footnotes.

If this is a behavior you would like to make document-wide, you should do so by choosing Type > Document Footnote Options… then going to the Layout tab. There are many options here for configuring the look and feel of footnotes.