Jumping from word to word.

This little trick may be useful when you micro-edit a text. 

When you want to jump from word to word quickly, you don’t need to click with your moust cursor or swipe on the trackpad — and miss. 

Instead, press Shift and tap on right/left arrows. The cursor will ‘jump’ to the next word. 

Equally, you can highlight text word by word by pressing Shift and Option simultaneously. This can be useful for example, when you add hyperlinks to parts of the text.

Read my post 'The Many Uses of the Shift Key.'

Word Count Revisited — Pages 7.2

For word (character) count, go to the View Menu and slide down to Show/Hide word character count. It will appear at the bottom left corner of your document in Pages.

The current version of Pages (7.2) allows you to select easily a word, character lines or paragraphs count. Just click/tap on the drop-down menu there and select what you need.

Readers of this blog often ask how to subtract the endnotes or footnotes from the overall word count.

This is fairly easy: press the Command key (next to the Space bar) and tap A. This highlights the whole of the text but leaves out the footnotes. Note the word count and click/tap away. That's it!

The screenshot below shows a character count of the thesis I am currently working on without the footnotes.

See also this post on the same subject, and enjoy Pages!

Indexing and Bookmarking in Pages 6.2

When you work on a long document with Contents section or create a linked Index at the end of it, you may want have jumplinks in your document. So that, for example, you can click on a chapter title in Contents and go straight to the body of the chapter from there. Equally, you may want to click on a word, a name or a phrase in the Index and got straight to it in the main body of the text. 

Here is how to create such jumplinks.

1. Start with the chapter itself, not its title in Contents. In the document, go to the chapter you want linked from contents or index. 

2. Highlight the title of the chapter. Like in the first picture. 

3. In the Toolbar, (row of icons at the top of a Pages document), click on Document and then, in the side pane, on Bookmarks. Click on Add Bookmark. The highlighted text becomes a bookmark and shows in the Document>Bookmarks pane. TIP: if the Toolbar doesn't show at the top of the document, go to the View menu at the top of the screen and choose 'Show Toolbar'. 

4. Go back (scroll) to Contents, highlight the title of the chapter there. Then either go to the main Pages menu and choose Format > Add Link > Bookmark, or click in Insert icon ini the document Toolbar and go to Link > Bookmark. TIP: do not highlight the paragraph by clicking three times, for some reason it doesn't work; only highlight by dragging the cursor over the words.

5. A small dialogue window will appear (see picture bottom right). In the Link to line, click on the arrowed tab to open a drop-down menu and choose Bookmark. In the Bookmark line, again click on the drop-down menu with a list of already created bookmarks and choose the one you want. To test, click on Go to Bookmark, and the document will scroll down to the chapter.

Next time you want to jump from Contents straight to the required chapter, click on the title in contents and Go to Bookmark in the dialogue window.

Of course, contents or index can be at the end of the document, the process remains the same. You can use it to create multiple links to a particular word or phrase in the document.

For example, if you study a literary work or a historical document, you can create jumplinks to every mention of a particular character, place, expression or term. This will work in the same way as Search and Find Function, but the added benefit here is that you can create jumplinks from index with your notes or comments to the relevant place in the body of the document. Unlike Search and Find they will stay with the document. 

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What to do when text lines are squashed after copy-pasting.

When copy-pasting from a non-Pages document you sometimes get ‘crushed lines’, when there is no interval between the lines and they overlap one another.  Like in the picture.

To return text back to normal, select the whole ‘squashed’ passage, go to Text Inspector and in Spacing>Line click on the drop-down menu under the line spacing value window. 

Change the setting from Exactly to Single. This changes the setting  from points to lines and a measurement of one corresponds to the one-line interval between the lines. In the source document it was probably set in points, not lines. 

The text will now have the usual one line interval between the lines.

And of course – don't panic! Nothing's wrong with the computer or the programme.

Combine layout and text boxes to create a multi-column design.

Read this previous post about the background for the page shown here.

This magazine page shows the layout grid (shortcut to show: Command+Shift+L, type again to hide) and all the objects on the page selected, showing their handles.

The page is designed in Word Processing mode. You have to choose the mode when you start your project. 

Note that the top of the page has a one and four-column layout for text. You can choose the number of columns in the Layout Inspector. 

The heading at the top is in one column, then there is a layout break, followed by the four-column layout. 

The lower half of the page is a combination of two Text Boxes and two graphic images, slightly tilted. 

To tilt, use rotate function: press Command and then drag one of the handles of the photo. You can use rotating wheel or arrows in Graphics Inspector. 

There is also a flip function. In the left photo the airplane can go leftward or rightward when you flip the image. Be careful: if there is lettering in the image, it will be inverted like in the mirror if you flip the photo.

In this design, what holds the text in four columns at the top half of the page is wrapping. Text boxes in the lower half push the text above into the four-column layout. 

Adding a layout break at the end of the article at the top of the page will also keep the text in four columns. But you may find that using text boxes alongside the layout gives more flexibility.

In Page Layout mode, use Text Boxes to create a multiple column layout.  

The image here is a screenshot. Actual PDF will have a much higher definition suitable for high-end printing.

Read more in my new book 'iWork for Mas OSX Cookbook' 

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How to Change Units of Measurement in Rulers.

If you are more used to Imperial measures (inches not centimetres) and your copy of iWork came with metric units activated as default, you can change it in Preferences>Rulers. Preferences are under Pages, Numbers or Keynote menu.

Click on the Ruler Units drop-down menu and choose the measure unit of your preference. 

It's useful not just for when you want to use the unit that you are more comfortable with, but for finer adjustment of tabs and bullets when formatting text. Instead of using split inches or centimeters, you can use typographical points, which are more suitable for paragraph or bullet indentations. 

And the other way round, when positioning graphics objects on a page, split inches or centimetres may give a more exact position to the object. Set the coordinates in Metrics Inspector.

There is a converter widget with the Dashboard. Click on Dashboard in the Dock, choose units from drop-down menus, enter numbers and convert. 

  

How to Add Objects as Inline Instead of Floating

This tip is for those who have a habit of working like this: store photos or other graphic images on the Desktop and drag them into the Pages project when needed. 

When Pages are ready to 'take' the photo a blue contour line appears around the outer margins or around a placeholder (mediaholder). Let go of the mouse and the picture will plop in the document as a floating object.

Golden Retriever

If your project is mostly text, you may want to anchor the image to a particular part of the text – the one that the image illustrates. For example, you describe your new-born puppies, black and white, and want the picture of the white puppy to stay with his description and the black puppy portrait – with his.

When images are floating, the relevant text may flow away from the description as you write. When they are inline (anchored), they will move with the text.

To import an image as inline straightaway: 

Press Command (⌘) as you drag and the blinking cursor will indicate the insertion point!

Let go, and the white puppy will sit with his description and the black will be anchored to his. 

Black Retriever 

If you copy-paste an image from another document, click on the point in text where you want it to go as an inline object. If you copy-paste and want the image to be floating, click on one of the floating objects already in the document and then paste (or click outside the text area, so that there is no blinking cursor).

Video clips and objects of other types can be imported in the same way.

The puppies are mine and have grown into beautiful big dogs.

Three Dots Shortcut (Ellipsis)

This one is for you if you love unfinished sentences and thoughts, or if you sigh after every (written) phrase, or even in the middle of the phrase. Or, seriously, for omitted parts of a quotation, or for long lines between parts of text.

To type three dots in one hit on the keyboard, press Option (alt ⌥) and hit semicolon (;).

⌥ + ;  =  …

The 'posh' name for the three dots is ellipsis. To read all about it, go to this wikipedia article, which also shows and describes other punctuation signs. 

The Rest Is Practice: Why Learn Touch-typing

Left index finger goes on F.

First, you see typos as soon as you make them, and are able to correct them more efficiently, without having to stop typing and going through the typed text again. Second, and more exciting, you will soon notice that when you touch-type you can think as you write. After a while you also discover that you can type-write or type-retype much faster. Then, you can also perform many computer operations through keyboard shortcuts – save, select, copy-paste, etc., also without looking down. 

зфпуы - рщц ещ ьфлу сщщгкув щк сщдщгк сщвув увпуы шт ф ьфпфяштуб икщсргку щк ищщл -

The text above was supposed to be in English,  I just forgot to switch language mode from Russian to English – and carried on typing while looking at the keyboard and not at the screen. What a nuisance and a punishment for not concentrating. And not remembering to stick to touch-type. When you've mastered touch-typing, you can type without looking at the keyboard, your fingers find the necessary keys all on their own. Much like you tie your shoelaces or press on pedals in the car without looking down.

Why is it important to learn touch-typing (blind typing)?

With so much around us operated through keyboards, it may be considered a basic life skill. At first you may find that touch-typing slows you down, but the more you practice the more you find it liberating to see the text as it appears on screen.

Here is how to start. First, learn the 'home' position of your hands. F and J keys on a QWERTY layout usually have little knobs studs – that's where your left and right index fingers should rest in the basic position. Move left finger to the right to type G and right finger to the left to type H. On QWERTY put the little finger of your left hand on A and the little finger of your right hand on ;. Thumbs should rest on the Space Bar. If a word finishes with a letter in the left-hand segment of the keyboard, hit space with your right thumb, if it's on the right, use your left thumb.

From here learn where all other keys are, relative to the basic position. Start with the basic position and progress to all-fingers touch-typing.

The rest is practice.

There are numerous courses and resources on the web to learn touch typing. Have a look at this BBC animated site, designed primarily for youngsters, but content-wise good for anyone.

How to add accents to letters without switching languages

Option key

How do you type café with the accent sign on top of the 'e'?

If you use several languages on your Mac you probably know that it is dead simple to switch between the languages (keyboard layouts): Control Command + Space for the two most recently used or Control ⌘+Option+Space to switch between more than two languages used. (You have to add language options in System Preferences.)
Important UPDATE: In current OS (July 2019, High Sierra), instead of Command key use Control+Space bar to swithc between the last two languages. To go through all the languages you use, add Option (alt) key to the combination. 

However, simply to add an accent (diacritical mark) to one or two letters in your text, you don't need to switch to French, Russian, Spanish or German.

Option key (the funny one between Control and Command) gives most commonly used diacritical signs: press Option and type 'e' to get acute accent, common in French and also used as a stress mark. The accent will appear highlighted in your document, then type 'e' or another letter that needs the accent - é, á, ó or í .

To see the available combinations open the Keyboard Viewer and press Option.

To add circumflex (Welsh tô bach – little roof) press Option and type 'i' to get the highlighted accent circumflex, then type the letter you need: ô, î, ê or â.

Tilde sign, common in Spanish, is with letter n – ñ.

Two dots (trema or umlaut) over some letters in Russian, German and other languages are with u – ü or ë.

Cedilla, the little tail attached in French to 'c' when it should be pronounced as 's', is, logically, with 'c' – press Option and type ç.

It's cleverly programmed – it won't let you put diacritics on letters with which they are not used.

Switching between language layouts can be an annoying distraction, so learning this little trick can help improve efficiency. It takes little time to memorise accent combinations and then you use them automatically, much like touch-typing.

There is an article on Wikipedia describing diacritical marks and accents, their names and uses.

Read more in my new book 'iWork for Mac OSX Cookbook' (2012). Follow me on Twitter at iworkinpages, like my page I Work in Pages on Facebook 

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Shortcut for Highlighting Text (The Many Uses of the Shift Key)

Highlight text word by word

Double click the word to highlight (select) it, triple-click to select the paragraph. Everybody knows this. 


But what if you want to select just a few words or a phrase? For example, to link a word or several words, the title of a book or an article to a page on the internet or to another page in your document? Dragging the cursor over a couple of words may be annoying if you are in a hurry.  


Here is a keyboard shortcut to select text character by character from cursor:

press Shift (⇧) and then a keyboard arrow - right to select to the right, left - to the left of the cursor. 

Now, here is a neat one. To select text word by word:

press together Shift and Option (Alt, ⌥) keys and hit keyboard arrows.

With this shortcut you can quickly highlight several words.

And then there is another one - for highlighting text to the end or the beginning of the line:

Command (⌘) + Shift + right/left arrow.

Typing the right arrow will highlight all text to the end of the line, typing the left arrow will highlight all text to the beginning of the line. Press and hold Command and Shift, then type left and right arrows - you will have the whole line highlighted.


Those who remember type-writers know that the main purpose of the Shift key was to to switch register to capital letters or type some punctuation marks. It does much more on modern computers. Combinations of Shift/Option/Command give you access to a variety of special symbols and foreign letters and accent marks. Pressing Shift while restarting your Mac is one of the most useful troubleshooting techniques - Safe Boot.
  
Jump-selecting word by word, line to line is described in the iWork user's guide and the list of keyboard shortcuts sits under Help menu. Trouble is, it's not often clear why or when you may need a particular shortcut. It's worth making a note of any frequently repeated operation specific to your work, and then to find out if there is a useful shortcut for it. 

Editing Large Texts: the Uses of Command+F

Find command is indispensable when working on large chunks of text.

Press Command and type F to open the Find window. Then  type the word, or word combination, or part of a word in the window - and presto, you can scan a very large text in seconds to find what you are looking for. Here are a few tips I've noted to myself while copy-editing and reviewing a draft of a 340-page book.

Take for instance a situation when you notice that a woman character is described as having shiny auburn hair on page 187. You definitely remember that she was a red-head before. But on what page? Type 'read-head' and click on 'Previous' to find the passage to check. And there she is, a read-head on page 23. It's not just that people do change the colour of their hair, it's also that authors sometimes forget how they described their characters. It happens even to great writers, like Tolstoy. In War and Peace Prince Andrei has grey eyes in one part, blue eyes in another and wears a small icon of Mother of God in one passage, but St.Nicolas in another.

Click 'Next' to scan forward and see if the error appears further down the text.

Then, for example, you notice that a name or a particular word are spelled in different ways. Is it a mistake? Should it be corrected? Do you need a cross-reference?

Take 'kabuki'. Is it 'kabuki' or 'cabuki' or 'kobuki'? Check the word in the dictionary and then click on 'Find and Replace' to scan the text.

Take the name Krushev or Khrushev, the Soviet leader during the Cuban missile crisis. Which is it? There is also a Khrushchyov variant. Choose one spelling and stick to it for indexing and referencing purposes, if not for anything else.

Or the word 'czar' which seems to annoy the Tea Party movement in America so much. It can also be spelled, correctly, 'tzar' or 'tsar' reflecting the phonetics of the original Russian word, while 'czar' incorporates the Roman-Byzantine etymology (Ceasar). In this case just choose the most commonly used spelling and correct throughout, using 'Next' or 'Find and Replace'.

I posted recently on putting together a book in Pages where I recommended breaking big projects into manageable chunks. Here I'd add: with large bodies of text pre-edit them using the tips above BEFORE breaking the text into chunks (chapters, sections or pages). This will help to avoid errors and discrepancies. 

Command+F works in most internet browsers. Suppose you googled something and found a long article on the subject. To find the relevant passage in the article, type Command+F to open the search window (it's at the top in Safari and at the bottom in Firefox), then type what you are looking for.

Users of Apple Mac OS X have long appreciated the Spotlight search tool, which allows to search for files on your computer. It has its human limitations, though. What if you don't remember the name of the file? Or the same word appears in a multitude of files?

Here Command+F comes handy because you can open it in any folder or any window and start the search from where you are.

And of course these notes apply to most other word processing applications with search function.

Read my post on Teapots and the Tea Party movement and a Russian-style tea party. Photo: Apple blossom, ©A.Anichkin

And watch 'We don't need no stinkin CZARS' video about Teapotters fighting czarism (begins at 5:40 min into the clip). Video by New Left Media.

Curving text in Pages: a suggestion

A reader suggested how to curve small amounts of text for design purposes, like for instance, an address. The idea is to put each letter in its own text box and then arrange the boxes in a curving line.  (click here and go to the last comment in the thread)


I've tried out the technique with 'rue des Pages', a real street in the town of Flers, Normandy (see picture in the side-bar and this earlier post).


It works, but it is time-consuming. Thanks for the nice suggestion.

A few tips:

- uncheck ‘object causes wrap' in Wrap Inspector, otherwise the boxes will interfere with each other and letters will disappear.


- when arranging boxes press Command while moving them. This disables ‘snap to grids' function which gets in your way and may be very annoying.

You may want to do it this way if you have a favourite font. But I would also suggest trying to draw your own letters - do the whole alphabet! - and then copy-pasting them as objects and arranging them in a curving line. I've described how to in several previous posts, for example here, and on using various styles of shape frames to make letter here. Look here for a list of related posts. It may take the same amount of effort as doing it with text boxes.

After I posted this, I found another easy way of curving text. Please read 'Curving text in Pages with Comic Life'. Here is an example:

Read more in my new book 'iWork for Mac OSX Cookbook' (2012). Follow me on Twitter at iworkinpages, like my page I Work in Pages on Facebook and add me to your circles on Google+.

How to change underline colour

A client sent me text in blue colour with some words underlined. When published in print, the text had to be in black. I select the text, open colour palette, click on black – text colour changes, but the underline stays blue. What to do?

When a portion of text is underlined in a colour different from the text and you want it to be the same, here is how to do it:

- Select (highlight) underlined text;
- Open font panel (Command+T);
- Click on underline button and choose Colour from the drop-down menu, the last option. When colour palette opens click on the colour you want.

Some tricks sink in without any effort, but for some reason I always stumble over this one. Can't ever remember how to do it without going to the Help section.

So, even though it is simple (when you know it) I decided to put it here just because I think that if I get stuck there are others out there who can't immediately figure out how to solve it.

Word count in Pages: use two Inspectors

Word count in Pages - where is it?

Open Inspector,
click first icon - Document
and click on the third tab - Info.

Here you get all document statistics, including word and character count. To get word count in a selection, click and drag cursor to highlight it.

Recently, on two different days two new colleagues have started, for the first time, working in Pages in our office. The first question they asked? 'Where is the word count?'

When you work on a text document which must have a particular word count, for example, to fit in an allocated space on the page or answer academic requirements for length, you watch the word count all the time. But you may also need to do text formatting through Text Inspector. Switching between inspectors could be annoying. When I work on long text documents I open two inspectors - one for word count and one for word processing (text). This way word count is always at a glance distance.

To open the second Inspector go to

View>New Inspector

Read this previous article on I Work in Pages:
Quick word count in Pages

and for an overview of Pages:
Measuring iWork/Pages - against what?

Measuring iWork Pages - against what?

Walt Mossberg, a Wall Street Journal columnist and a writer on All Things Digital web-site, in a rather condescending though overall positive review of iWork 2008 suite writes this about Pages (August 2007):

The Pages program was originally more of a page-layout program than a writing tool. The new version attempts to fix this imbalance with a less artsy word-processing mode. But the effort is only partly successful. It still de-emphasizes some writer-friendly features. For instance, its auto-correct function is much weaker than Word’s. Another example: In Word, to see how many words your document contains, you just glance at the bottom of the screen. In Pages, you must dig down into a submenu to find the answer. The command for showing invisible formatting marks also is harder to find than in Word.

Word count in Pages, a source of numerous wailings, is indeed in a submenu (Writing Tools>Show Statistics). However only someone new to Pages would use this path, common in older versions of Word and AppleWorks/Claris. To set Pages to show word count instantly and dynamically:

- under View menu open New Inspector, set it to Document>Info and watch the word/character count as you type. Check word count in highlighted selections of text. Use the second Inspector for other tasks.

(picture on the left shows word count for the quoted text from Walt Mossberg's article.)

OK it's not at the bottom of your page, but it is at a glance's distance. Update (Jan 2012): Current versions of iWork/Pages show word count at the bottom of the page. Fuller count features – characters, lines, paragraphs etc. are in Document Inspector.  

Pages will remember that you had two Inspectors open and after you'd closed a document or quit the programme a new document will open with two Inspectors again, one of them ready to show Word count. Document Info Inspector can be positioned wherever it is most convenient for you - at the bottom of the screen for instance, if you want to stick with your Word habits. (Please read about word count in Pages on this blog here)

I was also mildly surprised at the comment that invisible formatting marks are harder to find. Yes, Word has the paragraph sign in the Toolbar which shows invisibles, but in Pages there is an easy to remember (and to type with either left or right hand) shortcut

Command+Shift+i for showing/hiding invisibles and Command+Shift+l for showing/hiding the layout grid.

In the Menu this command is under View.
(Please read a previous article on this blog about the two shortcuts here)

As a matter of principle I don't use AutoCorrect (how do you auto correct form when it should be from? and vice versa?) or autoanything and am against introducing into Pages the AutoSave function (horror: boss sees your autosaved 'draft' comments on her memo! you meant to delete them, but too late...) I have just looked at AutoCorrect options in Pages and in Word. They don't seem to be very different to me and both offer customisation.

I started working in Pages three years ago when work on the English language magazine for Normandy began. Over that period I have done a substantial amount of work in Word, including translations of two books from English into Russian and numerous articles from Russian into English. Over time I noticed that I was getting increasingly frustrated with Word, mostly because of its cluttered look, but also because I felt that somehow it took me longer to do word processing operations in Word than in Pages. Word looses to Pages in exactly this presence of too many formatting features, most of which user may not even need. In the end, when the last batch of translations came from my client in Word, I simply copy/pasted the text into Pages, did all the work, including proofing, referencing and word/character count, there and then copy/pasted the finished document back into Word to send to the client. Even though many of my co-workers and clients send me their documents in Word, my feeling is that there is less and less room for Word in what I do. In many cases I don't even open Word docs in Word, but in Pages or TextEdit.

Writing, editing and proofing tools in Pages, in my opinion, are superior to that of Word. In my line of work I find very useful the ability to check variations in spelling (British English/American English) with the built-in Oxford American dictionary, richer than the Word dictionary. The programme's Writing Tools (Edit Menu) also allow, again, direct from your open document, to do Google, Wikipedia and Spotlight searches. The former two are invaluable for editors, proofers and, I suppose, researchers, while the latter makes it easy to track numerous documents relating to a particular subject. Spotlight works from practically all Mac applications - Mail, Address Book etc.

Two general observations:

1- iWork is a developing new software - the progress from the first 2005 version to the latest is astounding. It has become much more than an office productivity suite. It is not clear to me where Apple intends to take it from here. I suspect that, concentrating on sales of affordable, status-sensitive hardware (iPhone, iPod) and on its 'switch campaign' (bringing Mac computers back into the mainstream) they simply don't have the resources to promote iWork as well as it deserves. Or it may be that Apple is just not ready for this. It may be, I also suspect, that Apple does not yet WANT to overmarket iWork so as not undermine its own top of the line design products.

2 - Comparing iWork with Office is not entirely correct, nor fair, I think. iWork gives ordinary self-taught users immense design power, up until recently only available to professionals. And it complements other applications and tools that come preinstalled on Macs - iPhoto, Preview, Mail, Safari, Address Book. So, in fact, iWork is not so much a stand-alone product like Office, but a naturally integrated Apple Mac application. I am, of course, partial, but in all honesty I'd compare Word to TextEdit (old Simple Text), the preinstalled Mac word processor, rather than Word to Pages. Apple has enhanced TextEdit over the last few years to the point that most day to day word processing tasks (letters, memos, lists etc.) can be done in TextEdit. It now takes photos and other graphics too. Font Panel and Colour Palettes in TextEdit are the same as in Pages. Instead, I'd measure iWork against InDesign and Quark, or MS Publisher. In fact, www.stocklayouts.com, a commercial web-site offering professionally designed templates, has recently added iWork/Pages to the list of compatible programmes, which also includes InDesign, Quark, Corel, Illustrator, Publisher and, yes, Word.

Pushing text with invisible objects

Pushing text away from a graphic object or making lines level may be tricky if you use just wrapping (Wrap Inspector).

In the first picture the bulleted text with monthly events calendar jumps up in broken lines because the Going Out graphic panel is made as an Alpha (no background) object. Setting a higher wrap count doesn't help because lines will still be broken and text in the wide text box to the left would be affected.

One way of dealing with this layout problem is to use an invisible object, here, in the second picture, it is a rectangular object positioned above the text in the right-hand column. To do this:

- create a floating object,
- in Object Inspector set Fill to none, Stroke to none to make it invisible in the final document (PDF),
- position the object so that it slots within the column grid,
- and adjust the size and wrapping of the object so that the top lines of text in central and right-hand column are level.

Now the layout looks tidy.

This is a simple layout trick that works well when you find it difficult to make text flow around any object on the page the way you want it to. Not just rectangular objects can be used, but ovals and other shapes.

Mac-Mouse Equivalent of the 'Right-Click'

Fortunately, I have never had to work on a computer with the two-button mouse, not for a long time. 

Fortunately, because I have naturally developed a healthy habit of using my left hand to do keyboard shortcuts while carrying on with my right hand - adjusting the viewed part of the document etc. This simple trick takes a lot of stress off your mouse-moving hand, but if you are too used to working with a two-button mouse the stress is doubled.

Quite often I see advice which includes 'right-click on your mouse and...' Instructions like this have baffled me so much that eventually I put a sticky on my computer to remind me of the one-button (or, these days, no-button) Mac-mouse equivalent of the 'right click':

Control+click

which, of course, opens the options menu on the screen.

But, honestly, if you've just switched from Windows to Mac, try to get rid of your two-button habit - and avoid repetitive strain syndrome.

Fitting more text into an object than it can take

Objects often can't take all the text that you want to fit into it at the font size you want it to be, even after the inset margin is set to zero. This problem occurs often with nonrectangular objects - ovals, stars etc.

One way of going round this problem which I've been successfully using is to superimpose a separate Text Box over the Object (shape):

- format the Object (rectangular, oval, star etc.) the way you want it to look;
- create a floating text box, set wrap to none, make frame invisible, set dimensions to be equal or slightly bigger than the object, type in your text, format it the way you want it to look 'inside' the object;
- move text box over the oval (use 'Bring to front' under Arrange menu if the Text Box slides under the shape);
- Group the object and the text box together or 'Print' to PDF if it is to be used later as a repeating feature, like, for instance, an ad booked for a long series.

That way you can 'fit' much more text with letters almost touching the edges of the object which is not possbile if you try just to type inside it.

This simple trick could also be used for attractive design purposes, when letters inside an colour-filled object touch or even 'poke through' the frame of an object.

This method is similar to the 'patchwork' tehcnique of making quick-fix corrections in ready supplied images and text files in PDF format. Please check this earlier article:
Last minute corrections - use patchwork

Photo: apple blossom coming out

Colour wash for paragraphs - use tabs

A wise mother once told her daughter: never admit you can type or else you'll spend your life as a secretary...

While people spend a lot of effort mastering their computers the basic skill of typing is often overlooked.

However it is through typing that you learn many tricks which later help to understand and master design. I was lucky enough to go through typing courses at least three times in my professional life (as a student, as a cub reporter with a large national wire service and as an editor with one of the first Apple Mac-based publications in Russia.)

Too often colour wash is used without spacing the text within the wash. It makes columns 'stick' to the edges of the coloured area which gives an untidy, sloppy appearance to the look of the page. (compare the two screenshots on the right)

One simple way of setting text off the edges is through tabs.

- Open Text Inspector, click on Tabs.
- Select the text with coloured background
- and set Paragraph indents to a positive value: 0,1 - 0,3 cm should be enough for off-setting the text. Remember to increase the first line indent accordingly.

For inverted headings (light letters on dark background) with large font sizes a larger paragraph indent might be needed.

Working with text indents could also be cleverly used when you need to change the width of columns or part of a column, for instance to highlight an important point or make a list to stand out.

To increase the coloured wash above and below the text use Before paragraph and After paragraph options under the Text tab in the Text Inspector.