Advanced longform typography techniques: Fixing rivers in justified text in InDesign

In this video, you'll learn advanced techniques in InDesign to correct rivers - distracting spaces in between words - in your justified text. This technique is great not only for readability and improving your longform typography, but for accessibility as well. We'll also learn how to turn on highlighting of hyphenation and justification errors in InDesign to make rivers easy to identify. Justified text is common in professional newspaper, magazine, and book design, so learning to set it well is a great skill to have in your toolbox!
Download the support material for this tutorial: drive.google.com/drive/folder...
Follow along and get recommended settings from Accessible Digital Documents: accessible-digital-documents....
Chapters in this video:
[00:00] Introduction
[00:41] Set up your file
[00:57] How to clear overrides
[01:44] Adjust the spacing of the text
[02:13] What is justified text alignment?
[02:57] What are rivers in typography and how can I spot them?
[04:20] How to highlight hyphenation and justification errors (rivers) in InDesign
[05:32] Changing the justification settings on a paragraph style
[08:39] Refine the justification using tracking
[10:07] Using discretionary hyphens to fix hyphenation and justification errors
[10:41] Finalizing the typesetting
[12:24] Make sure the last line of your type is left aligned, not justified
[13:46] Final placement
[14:30] Closing remarks

[@brucestrickland8704]

You covered everything the other videos I watched did not. The "justify all lines except for the last line" corrected 95% of my issues. Tracking took care of the rest. Thanks again for making this video!!

[@philphilphil]

Wow, thank you so much. Just working through a document and the rivers were driving me bonkers. I went through several tutorials but this one really fixed it perfectly. The document looks absolutely amazing. Thank you!!!

[@JORICTV]

To anyone having trouble with video quality: I suggest watching the video in 1080p. Maybe on a TV while you're on your computer following along. Also this video was super helpful, thanks!

[@aaronchiusano-mcss-5739]

Very helpful! You defined everything first and then showed the technical end that made following along easy. Much appreciated!

[@Hendrik...]

The best justified text tutorial on youtube!

[@ProfessorKExplains]

Thank you!!

[@salwatching]

I'm so relieved I caught your tutorial! For years I'd been feeling inadequate, thinking I must be doing something wrong that the 'first pass' was always so riddled with H&J violations. Now I see that fixing them is PART of the craft. Whaaat a relief! So do you feel (pun unintended) justified in asking for a little edit if you encounter stubborn H&Js?

[@penumbral_psithurism]

Well, that was a big help, thanks!

[@josuez5633]

This helped me on a typography class assignment, thank you, subscribed

[@ProfessorKExplains]

I’m so glad to hear that, thank you! Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to see. I’m on break from teaching for the summer, so I have a little time to explore other areas of design and web development!

[@Randaakarim]

doing my first publication for my Masters typography class and this has SAVED me! THANK YOU

[@ProfessorKExplains]

No problem at all!

[@tatyanahavrylchyk2556]

Thanks a loooot! Finally, i understand how to justify in right way)))

[@ProfessorKExplains]

AHHHH yay! That makes me so happy to hear. You’re very welcome!

[@alysawakefield4963]

thank you!! this totally saved my annual report!

[@tjuszaa]

this is what ive looking forrrr, thank you so much for the tutorial lovely

[@krista6538]

thank you thank you thank you thank you! I wish I had sucked it up and learned these better long-type techniques earlier.

[@soominssi7353]

Thank you so much! This was the most detailed explanation I found till now and it will really help me with my project, thanks!

[@ProfessorKExplains]

No problem at all, I’m glad to hear it helped! Good luck with your project!

[@lydiabeek114]

Thank you very much for this tutorial! I am designing my own dissertation and want it to be justified, so this was super helpful!

[@ProfessorKExplains]

Ahhh that's fantastic! Good luck on your dissertation!

[@lucyaccardo9110]

Excellent top quality teaching. 🎉

[@Artiin]

I'm working on a school assignment where we work with justified text and I had to redo the page 3 times and still couldn't manage to get rid of those rivers. You saved me from hours and hours of struggling, thank you so much xx

[@Leyla18231]

Thank you so much for this tutorial, so thorough and concise at the same time!

[@ProfessorKExplains]

You're very welcome!

[@mangosday]

This was so helpful! I didn't know about this before. After the justification change in my paragraph style, there was only one line left I had to fix.

[@army8212]

Thank you. This was very valuable information that I will always use.

[@Lanaleem365]

Thank you so much for this! I'm currently laying out a book with tons of dialogue and this has saved me a lot of time.

[@ProfessorKExplains]

I'm so glad to hear this!

[@StillOnTrack]

Cool. I've been learning about accessibility with regard to websites but I didn't know there were recommendations out there for longform copy too.

[@davidagbona8869]

Love this, Proessor K!

[@dannym6420]

Extremely helpful! Thanks!!!

[@ProfessorKExplains]

You're welcome!

[@spottynumbat]

Very clear and helpful; thank you.

[@ProfessorKExplains]

Glad it was helpful!

[@alexwalton4827]

Thanks so much!

[@PieterHanja]

Thank you!

[@superb_oop]

Great video 🙌 thanks

[@coppunkhead]

you are an amazing teacher! your explanations are great :)

[@ProfessorKExplains]

Thank you so much! I’m finishing my Master’s degree right now and this is absolutely the energy I need. It’s been an intense year!

[@coppunkhead]

@@ProfessorKExplains I'm happy I could give something in return :) You got this!

[@discoveryzone12]

Thanks a lot for the tuto

[@jasonjohnson3577]

Excellent!!!

[@ProfessorKExplains]

Thank you, glad it helped! 😁

[@AbbesAbbes2023]

Thankyou !

[@rolandmol]

Very nice tutorial, but... when you add or delete text in a correction round all the manual tracking within the paragraph has to be done over (it will basically be a mess that you will have to reset first). It's nice to highlight the H&J violations in the Preferences but it's not that the yellow is visible in printouts. It's just under the hood, right? I just stick to a slightly other H&J setting: Word Spacing: 90% 100% 110%. Letter Spacing: -3% 0% +3%. and Glyph Scaling: 97% 100% 103%. And that is just fine for 95% of all text. Way faster. As a bonus I can add discretionary hyphens here and there. That's it.

[@avelinileva]

Great! Thx

[@agathafischlerdelima1260]

Very helpful! 😊❤

[@ProfessorKExplains]

I'm so glad! :D

[@AhbabMuhammad]

Thank's Ashley... i love u

[@AvangerRaf]

Much needed information. Thank you so much for this! 🙌🏾

[@thedanielefeni]

Thanks for the video. There are some cases where the client doesn't allow a discretionary hypen. Do you suggest we just increase the tracking even though it might look a little obvious?

[@ProfessorKExplains]

Yeah, in that case there’s not a lot else you can do, and it’s better to preserve readability than try and squish everything. Another option might be to left align if they’re open to it.

[@thedanielefeni]

@@ProfessorKExplains thank you for the reply

[@Misaelllllllllllll]

Thankssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@ProfessorKExplains]

Anytime! :D

[@kimberbearly7909]

Used the keep option to keep paragraph lines together

[@ProfessorKExplains]

This is so cool - how did I not know this existed?! I’ll have to put this on my video list. In the meantime, though, for anyone who might be lurking, this is a great tutorial that will show you what keep options are and how to use them: ikkydesign.com/how-to-keep-text-together-when-separated-over-columns-in-indesign/ Thank you for teaching me something new today! My students are going to love this.

[@behradbv]

Thanks for you video. I think doing micromanagement and overrides on single lines may cause some problems if the text alters. Isn't it so?

[@sasabjorn23]

Hello Professor K! Thank you for this video, it was really helpful. I have a problem with last part of explanation. At 8:51 you make a yellow line blue by selection and did some more adjustments. My problem is that I cant do that selection. During H&J is ON, I can´t do any selection on my text and it does not turns blue, like selection option does not working. I can not finish my text editing. Thanx in advance. Sorry for grammar mistakes.

[@EclipsePRS]

Hi. Thanks for the video. I'm curious as to the panel on the right where you change your settings, is that a plugin and if so what is it called? Thank you.

[@ProfessorKExplains]

It's actually built right in! It's just the Properties panel. I'm not sure if it was present in the older versions of Adobe Creative Suite, but they put a lot more emphasis on it in Creative Cloud. It's kind of like the top bar that used to change when you selected different tools, but more powerful. It took me a while to get used to it, but now that I have, it's so helpful!

[@EclipsePRS]

@@ProfessorKExplains Thanks a lot. I had it docked but never used. Now I'll setup my UI a little differently as it looks super useful.

[@encapsulatio]

What do you use to magnify just those small parts of your screen where you move your mouse pointer? Thank you!

[@ProfessorKExplains]

Hi! It's an accessibility setting on a Mac, actually! I use Control and Option to temporarily zoom the screen, and adjusted some of my preferences so that it creates a small square that zooms. You can check it out here: support.apple.com/en-in/guide/mac-help/mh35715/mac

[@clem_clam]

How can I find the composition dialogue with a windows computer? I've been struggling for 30 minutes and I can't figure out how to highlight my H&J errors 😭

[@Hangryyy88]

How did you get the justified text style? All I had was basic paragraph when I opened paragraph styles.

[@ProfessorKExplains]

Ah! I think I was using a template in this video that had a justified paragraph style. You can create your own by creating a new paragraph style and setting the text alignment to justified, or just set the text alignment directly. You can find how to do that here: helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/aligning-text.html and how to create a new paragraph style here: helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/paragraph-character-styles.html

[@Hangryyy88]

Professor K Explains oh i see! Thanks for letting me know!

[@AllesKiten]

Sry. Professor. You can't follow the video because the options settings are way too small and thus unreadable.

[@user83c9f49]

Bro trying to watch youtube tutorials on a flip phone screen 😂