Fraction problem.

[shawnnGcvg]

Hello. I'm working a document which is changing number dates to fractions.

For example, the date 11/26.

On the general layout, it's visually showing up as 1½6.

When I look at this in Edit mode, it shows 11/26.

If I do a search for 11/26, it finds 1½6 on the layout.

If I do a search for 1½6, it does NOT exist though that's what's showing.  I'm attaching a screen shot of the same thing, viewed within Edit next to live layout.

HELP!

[Barb Binder]

Hi Shawn:

My best guess is that there is a GREP style assigned to the paragraph tag. Can you check and let us know?

~Barb

[shawnnGcvg]

no there isn't GREP assigned.

I think the preference file got corrupted on another person's InDesign that I'm collaborating with. She started having issues with strange things, and I imported part of her work into what I've done. When that happened, looks like everything that had things like 11/2 (as in November 2) converted to fractions (½) where 1/2 was.

Resetting preferences didn't help her, so we both uninstalled and reinstalled InDesign on both ends. She's running an older OS and couldn't upgrade, so she was working on an older version of InDesign. I imported her work (IMDL) into my IDD 2018.

She's now going to upgrade her OS on the Mac so we can be on the same version. Hope this killed the ghosts in the machine :-{

[Scott Citron]

Shawn, a quick typographic note. When a range of numbers is expressed like "11-11:30am," or "9/10-10/15" an En dash should be used instead of a plain hyphen.

[shawnnGcvg]

Thank you Scott.

[Jongware]

I see you marked Scott's reply as "Correct answer" but I get the feeling it was not meant that way. Unless – I did not try – changing the dashes solves your problem?

[Scott Citron]

Yes, although my reply might be the correct answer to another question, it is not going to solve your original fraction problem. I do believe that JW's reply (5.) is in fact Correct.

I have therefore taken the liberty to Uncorrect my earlier post.

[Jongware · Accepted solution]

You have enabled an OpenType feature as a default: "Fractions" *. You did that using one of these methods:

– having nothing selected at all and enabling it through the Character panel;

– having a dedicated Character Style for it (intentionally or by accident) and having that character style, in turn, enabled as a default for new text frames;

– manually enabling it in a Paragraph style "just to see what happens";

– having some text selected where it was applied manually and selecting "Redefine Paragraph Style".

– probably a ton more. (Yes, InDesign is very versatile – if you know what you are doing.)

You can go over all of these options and check them one by one (and I am sure you will ultimately find you applied it through yet another way that I did not list), or just select all text and disable the feature using the Character panel menu.

* Some OpenType fonts contain code to correctly create proper fractions out of any sequence of "digit / digit"; for example, Minion Pro does this correctly. Other font designers only include a straight conversion from 1/2, 1/4, and 3/4 to the precomposed characters ½, ¼, and ¾ (and some designers even don't bother to do that).