From the course: InDesign: Typography

Column rules - InDesign Tutorial

From the course: InDesign: Typography

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Column rules

“

- Another option we have in text frame options is to add column rules between the columns of a multi column text frame, another reason to use a single frame and divide it into multiple columns rather than multiple threaded frames. So I can select this frame command or control B to come to text frame options, column rules. I'll just turn that on. I can change the weight of the rule and I can also just adjust its position and its end, to align the starting point with the X height of the type and the ending point with the baseline of the last line. Okay, well that's all well and good and obviously if I move the text frame, those rules go along with it. But a consideration is if I now press W to show my paste board, I have a picture on the paste board and I'm going to move this picture into position. Now this image has a text wrap applied to it. If we look on the text wrap panel, we have wrap around object shape, so that's repelling the text around the shape of the text. The contour options are set to the alpha channel. So this has been cut out in Photoshop with a layer mask, which InDesign interprets as an alpha channel. Now the reason I'm mentioning this is that, it is the offset that will determine how far away the text is being pushed. Let me just move that over to the center a bit more. And if I increase this offset, that is going to affect the position of this rule. So let me increase it. And you can see that's moving the rule up and that's a very useful feature. And I think when column rules first came out, you couldn't do that. So this must be a subsequent improvement and that's nice, I like that. So that means that if you want column rules, this is probably the way to go, it's certainly the easiest way to go. There may be times when it's just not giving you the kind of flexibility that you might need, in which case I suggest you come and make yourself a separate layer and you choose the line tool, you draw your lines on the layer and adjust their height as you need to. And then when you've got them exactly where you want them, you lock that layer so that you can't move them by mistake.

Contents