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Text composition – Adobe InDesign User Manual

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Text composition

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Compose text
Hyphenate text
Prevent unwanted word breaks
Change Justification settings

Compose text

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 which 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 the default. For details on these options, see InDesign Help.

InDesign Magazine provides an article about fixing composition problems at

Mind the Gaps

.

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 in order 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.

You can use the Hyphenation dialog box to determine the relationship between better spacing and fewer hyphens. (See

Hyphenate text

.)

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

Do any of the following:

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