Setting text properties
PagePlus gives you a high degree of typographic control over characters and paragraphs, whether you’re working with frame text, table text, or artistic text.
Consult the summary table in the Text Properties section below for links to details on specific character and paragraph properties.
To apply basic text formatting:
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Select the text.
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Use buttons on the Text context toolbar to change text style, font, point size, attributes, paragraph alignment, bullets/numbering, or level.
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Right-click the text and choose Text Menu>Text Format, then select from the submenu: Character…, Paragraph…, Tabs…, Bullets & Numbering…, Drop Cap…, Kern, or Vertical Alignment. (You can also select these items from the Format menu.)
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Use the Character tab to adjust point size, width, letter spacing (tracking), leading, and advance.
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If a font is unavailable and has been substituted, its font name on the Context toolbar is prefixed by the “?” character.
Text properties
The Text Style dialog gives the option to change text attributes for Character, Paragraph, Tabs, Bullets and Lists, and Drop Caps. The same dialog is also used to change attributes belonging to a text style.
To change text attributes via the Text Style dialog:
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For character attributes, select the Character option in the tree menu, and change Font, Spacing, OpenType, and Language settings for the character.
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For paragraph attributes, select the Paragraph option, and change Alignment and Spacing, Hyphenation, Justification, Breaks, Initial Words, Line Above, and Line Below settings.
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For the Tabs option, set and position individual tab stops, with alignment and leader control.
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For bullets and numbering, choose the Bullets and Numbering option and choose Bullet, Number, or Multi-Level as a style from the drop-down menu, and choose a preset or custom bullet/list (by clicking the Details button).
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Control Drop Caps by setting dropped or raised drop cap settings.
Use the following table for an at-a-glance reference of the text properties you can control in PagePlus.
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Definitions/Options |
Description |
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Character – Font |
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Font |
A particular rendering of a character set that uses a consistent design. |
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font type |
Favorites, Recent, Websafe, Type 1, Monospaced, Symbol, Embedded, Missing |
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Size |
Point size: Vertical text measure |
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Style |
Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic |
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Case, position and other attributes |
All CAPS, small CAPS, |
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Text/Highlight color |
assign color and shade/tint |
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Use default OpenType features |
Enables/disables OpenType features (ligatures, fractions, stylistic sets, etc.) within the font (font has to support OpenType features). |
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Character – Spacing | |
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Spacing |
Normal, Expanded, Condensed |
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Position |
Normal, Raised, Lowered (by point size) |
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Width |
Width: Horizontal text measure |
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Auto kerning |
Auto spacing between one pair of characters above a defined point size. |
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Slant |
Angle of text (as degrees) |
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Optical justification |
Hanging punctuation control for text blocks. |
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Character – OpenType | |
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Alternates |
Swash, Contextual Swash, Stylistic Alternates, Slashed Zero, Stylistic Sets, Character Variants |
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Numeric |
Figure Style, Figure Width, text Position |
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Capitals |
Normal, Small Caps, All small caps, Petite caps, All petite caps, Titling, Unicase, Case-sensitive forms |
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Details |
Glyph composition/decomposition, Use default Opentype features, Disable all (Opentype features) |
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Character – Language |
Sets a language for spell and grammar checking |
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Alignment |
Left, right, center, justified, force justified |
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Left indent |
Indent distance from left |
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Right (indent) |
Indent distance from right |
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Special (indent) |
1st line, Hanging |
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Line spacing (Leading) |
Distance from one text baseline to the next: Single, 1.5, double, triple, multiple, pointsize % (as percentage of point size), at least, exactly. |
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Initial baseline at text height |
Sets the baseline from which spacing is calculated |
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Allow for text advances |
adjusts the line spacing immediately above (or below) where a superscript, subscript, or text advance is to be applied to selected characters. |
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Space before/After |
Offset between one paragraph and preceding & following paragraphs |
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Paragraph – Hyphenation |
Number of successive hyphens, hot zone, Auto hyphenation settings. |
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Paragraph – Justification |
Use for fine-tuning when justified and force justified is set on the paragraph. |
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Word spacing |
Minimum, maximum, optimum and last line minimum values |
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Letter spacing |
Minimum and maximum values for aut |
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Apply to unjustified text that falls outside the hyphenation hot zone |
Uncheck to stop justification of ragged text, i.e. prevents text from appearing less ragged. |
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Paragraph – Breaks |
Pagination settings: Keep together, Keep with next, Widow/Orphan control, Page break before |
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Paragraph – Initial Words
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Sets formatting to apply to the first few words of the paragraph. Control formatting (Font, caps control, Bold, Italic), words affected, and at which character to stop formatting. |
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Paragraph – Line Above |
Ruled lines above text: Weight, style, line ends/scaling, color, and spacing (above, below, or from left or right in relation to column edge, current text indent, or text) |
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Paragraph – Line Below |
Ruled lines below text: weight, style, line ends/scaling, color, and spacing (above, below, or from left or right in relation to column edge, current text indent, or text) |
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Tabs |
Tab stop positions, alignment, leader; tab deletion control |
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Bullets and Numbering |
Paragraph bullets, numbering and multi-level lists via presets or custom design; apply indent, numbering format, tabs, bullet color. |
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Drop Caps |
Dropped or Raised (by number of lines); distance from text) |
Other properties
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Vertical Text Alignment (Format menu) lets you adjust the vertical alignment of text within a text frame or table (artistic text can also be aligned). For frames and table cells, it moves existing text to the Top, Center, or Bottom of the container (or be Justified). For artistic text, the setting anchors a particular part of the object—for example, a “top” setting anchors the top line and forces new text to come in below, while a “bottom” setting anchors the bottom (most recent) line and pushes previous lines up as you type new lines. If alignment to “Center” is not as expected on large frame or artistic text this may be due to a multiple Line spacing setting (see Paragraph – Alignment and Spacing above).
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Some of the more unusual text properties in the above list work fine on the printed page, but aren’t supported in Web Publishing mode, owing to HTML limitations. For a complete list of these trouble spots, see the topic Automatic layout checking.
To clear local formatting (restore plain/default text properties):
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Select a range of text with local formatting.
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Click on the Clear Formatting option on the Text context toolbar’s text styles drop-down list (or Text Styles tab).
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Choose Clear Text Formatting from the Format menu (or right-click and pick option from Text Menu>Text Format submenu).
Default text properties
Default text properties are the settings used for text you type into any new text object. You can change these settings directly from selected text, or using the Text Style Palette. The Palette has the advantage of letting you review all the settings at a glance. (See Updating and saving defaults and Using text styles.)