Text composition

The appearance of text on your page depends on a complex interaction of processes called composition. Using the word spacing, letterspacing, glyph scaling, and hyphenation options you’ve selected, InDesign composes your type in a way that best supports the specified parameters.

InDesign offers two composition methods: Adobe Paragraph Composer (the default) and Adobe Single-line Composer (both are available from the Control panel menu). You can select the composer to use from the Paragraph panel menu, the Justification dialog box, or the Control panel menu.

InDesign supports four methods developed for typesetting, including Adobe Japanese Single-line Composer, Adobe Japanese Paragraph Composer, Adobe Paragraph Composer, and Adobe Single-line Composer. Each Composer evaluates possible breaks for Japanese and Roman text, and chooses those which best support the hyphenation and justification options specified for a given paragraph. The Adobe Japanese Paragraph Composer is selected by default. For details on these options, see InDesign Help.

Composition methods

InDesign offers two composition methods: Adobe Paragraph Composer (the default) and Adobe Single-line Composer. Both composition methods evaluate possible breaks, and choose those that best support the hyphenation and justification options you’ve specified for a given paragraph.

The Adobe Paragraph Composer

Considers a network of breakpoints for an entire paragraph, and thus can optimize earlier lines in the paragraph to eliminate especially unattractive breaks later on. Paragraph composition results in more even spacing with fewer hyphens.

The Paragraph Composer approaches composition by identifying possible breakpoints, evaluating them, and assigning a weighted penalty to them based on such principles as evenness of letterspacing, word spacing, and hyphenation.

The Adobe Single-line Composer

Offers a traditional approach to composing text one line at a time. This option is useful if you want to restrict composition changes from late-stage edits.

Choose a composition method for a paragraph

Set composition preferences

Hyphenate text

The settings you choose for hyphenation and justification affect the horizontal spacing of lines and the aesthetic appeal of type on your pages. Hyphenation options determine whether words can be hyphenated and, if they can, which breaks are allowable.

Justification is controlled by the alignment option you choose, the word spacing and letterspacing you specify, and whether or not you have used glyph scaling. You can also justify single words in narrow columns of fully justified text.

Adjust hyphenation manually

You can hyphenate words manually or automatically, or you can use a combination of the two methods. The safest way to hyphenate manually is to insert a discretionary hyphen, which is not visible unless the word needs to be broken at the end of a line. Placing a discretionary hyphen at the beginning of a word prevents it from being broken.

Adjust hyphenation automatically

Hyphenation is based on word lists that can be stored either in a separate user dictionary file on your computer, or in the document itself. To ensure consistent hyphenation, you may want to specify which word list to refer to, especially if you plan to take your document to a service provider or if you work in a workgroup.

Set automatic hyphenation options for a paragraph

When you set automatic hyphenation options, you can determine the relationship between better spacing and fewer hyphens. You can also prevent capitalized words and the last word in a paragraph from being hyphenated.

Turn off hyphenation

To turn off automatic hyphenation for a paragraph, do one of the following:

Prevent unwanted word breaks

By using nonbreaking hyphens, you can prevent certain words from breaking at all—for example, proper names or words which, when broken, become unattractive fragments. By using nonbreaking spaces, you can also keep multiple words from breaking—for example, clusters of initials and a last name (P. T. Barnum).

Prevent text from breaking

Create a nonbreaking hyphen

Create a nonbreaking space

The Nonbreaking Space varies in width depending on point size, the justification setting, and word space settings, whereas the Nonbreaking Space (Fixed Width) character maintains the same width regardless of context.

Change Justification settings

Use the Justification panel to precisely control how word spacing, letterspacing, and glyph scaling. Adjusting spacing is especially useful with justified type, although you can also adjust spacing for unjustified type.

Adjust word and letterspacing in justified text

Set glyph scaling in justified text

Use a flush space with justified text

Using a flush space character adds a variable amount of space to the last line of a fully justified paragraph—between the last word and an end-of-story character from a decorative font. Used with nonjustified text, the flush space appears as a normal word space. In justified text, it expands to absorb all available extra space on the last line. Using a flush space can make a dramatic difference in the way the entire paragraph is formatted by the Adobe Paragraph Composer.

Highlight lines that are too loose or tight

Because composing a line of type involves factors in addition to word spacing and letterspacing (hyphenation preferences, for example), InDesign cannot always honor your settings for word spacing and letterspacing. However, compositional problems in lines of text can be highlighted in yellow; the darkest of three shades indicates the most serious problems.