I am having difficulty with the ‘snap to baseline’ feature in InDesign.

[pcbrooks]

The document in question is a novel to be published this fall in the UK. Interspersed, throughout the work (and set off by ‘set in’ margins) are ‘copies’ of old letters, notes, drafts of pages from an earlier book, documents from various governments, and contemporary emails from both corporations and individuals. As you can imagine, all of the fonts are unique to each ‘sender’. These have been typeset, rather than inserted as objects or pictures. I chose not to set them in their own text frames. What with different font types, sizes, styles, and leading, on some of those pages where these elements appear, the ‘main body text’ will not snap to the baseline grid, thereby giving a non-uniform or unbalanced last line across the spread. It is very noticeable. There are a few inserted elements that I have set with the same leading as the main body text, and that solves the problem, but for those ‘documents’ that look odd with 15pt. leading, the problem sometimes persists. Any suggestions?

[Derek Cross]

A screen shot might help.

Is the book to be printed (as opposed to a digital version)?

[pcbrooks]

Derek,

Thank you for the reply. The book is to be printed by a small publishing house in Oxford.  Around 100 pre-sold limited/library editions - leather bound, gilt edges etc.; small run of first editions - dust jacket etc.).

I knew I would give it a day or two to see if anyone could help, so yesterday I went through all approx. 300 pages. Those spreads that are only 'main body text' or spreads that contain elements that I can set leading to match the 'main body text' (15pt.) were fine. I went ahead and hand-set the 'space before' in the paragraph palette on any spreads where I needed to adjust the last line to the bottom margin baseline across the spread.

The screen shot below shows a spread where I think I used this method. Baseline grid was turned off. 

As I said, with all the various fonts, sizes etc. I was not sure if there was a way to automatically have the last line always align across the spread, rather than to do it by hand - where I am still not sure if the lines align perfectly.

Thanks for your interest.

btw:  If you promise not to laugh...I am running InDesign CS3 (It's been a while since I needed it, and never bothered to upgrade) and I am running Mac OS X 10.8.5 - like my computers and software...I am old.

[jmlevy]

The screenshot you have posted shows the document grid, not the baseline grid.

[pcbrooks]

jmlevy,

I had turned off 'view baseline grid' last night when making changes. Here is a screen shot of the same spread with document grid turned off and the baseline turned on.

[jane-e]

A baseline grid involves three elements:

1. View the grid (View menu or View Options or Keyboard shortcut)

2. Set the grid (Prefs > Grid: Start at the top margin. Increment is Body Text leading.)

3. Apply the grid. (Best practice: Use styles and set Align to Grid: to All Lines)

For the lines where it does not work,

What is the leading?

What is Align to Grid set to?

What is the Increment in Preferences?

If you have an Increment of 14 pts and a Leading of 15 pts (or even 14.1 pts), the line will jump to 28 pts because it did not fit at 14.

[pcbrooks]

Jane-E,

Thanks for the response. Please see the response I sent to Derek above. With respect to your questions:

My leading is set to: 15pt.;

Align to Grid is set to: 'all lines'; and

Increment is set to 15p

The problem manifests due to the multiplicity of fonts employed for the elements interspersed within the 'main body text'. In order to have these elements (some hand-written fonts, some typewriter fonts, some email fonts) appear somewhat authentic, their internal leading needed to be something other than 15pt. Combine that with the fact they are of unique and different sizes anyway, that throws the main body text 'out of sequence', so to speak. 

[Jongware]

pcbrooks  wrote

There are a few inserted elements that I have set with the same leading as the main body text, and that solves the problem, but for those ‘documents’ that look odd with 15pt. leading, the problem sometimes persists.

There, right there, is the problem. Using the baseline grid, you force InDesign to use the same leading throughout. But at the same time, you want some text to have another leading value, so you cannot use the same baseline grid!

One solution could be to disconnect the "other" texts from the main text baseline, but you'll have to carefully space those paragraphs if they are followed again by 'main text', because the space between the last line "off" the grid and the next line "on" will vary (wildly – from infinitely small up to 99.9999% of an entire line height).

Mind you, it has been a while so maybe CS3 is too old, but: if it already has this feature, then you can also cut out the other text and paste as a new text frame, for which you can define a new baseline grid, separate from the main document's. Even if it's not possible, you can still switch the baseline grid alignment off for the text, so you can move the text frame anywhere you want without having the text jump around.

[pcbrooks]

Jongware,

Thanks for the advice. I did think of creating distinct text frames for each inserted element. I was trying to avoid that because the layout is virtually finished and I would, to degree, need to start over just to fix this alignment issue. If I have to I will, but I wasn't sure if I could then apply the baseline grid to the main body text for those spreads where the main body text (paragraph style: main body paragraph) runs across the bottom of the spread. In other words, can I apply the baseline grid to each full page text frame if there is another text frame inserted within, say the center, of that full page text frame? If I assign a unique baseline grid for the inserted text frame, will the over-all full page frame retain it's own baselne, or will I still need to adjust 'space before/space after elements to align the bottom line?

Thanks

[pcbrooks]

Reply to all of you who have helped thus far:

Thanks so much, I'll work on this tomorrow. I have to go make hay. Literally. It's going to rain here tomorrow, and we have another field that was cut two days ago that needs to be flipped, raked, baled, and get into the barn today.