How to fix Widows, Orphans, and Runts in Adobe InDesign automatically with Styles and GREP

[@nukefactory]

This is the GREP string so that you can copy and paste it into your GREP Style. \

[@sarahpea2976]

What a king, thank you. :)

[@pennedideas]

Thank you, NukeInDesign Angel.

[@savvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvva]

.{10}$ < Use this one instead, guys

[@nukefactory]

This pattern- .{10}$ -will work, sort of. The result is to just 'brute force' the grep style application to the last ten characters in each paragraph. If that's all you need, then no problem. However if your paragraph ends in a word with nine or more characters, plus punctuation (for example 'itinerary.' which was on only the second page of the document I just tested this on) it won't do anything. Given that the system load is the same for either Grep style approach, it doesn't really make sense to recommend this one instead.

[@kattiespence8243]

Been in publishing for 10 years... just now thought to look this up. My art director sucked and I've been winging it since! Thanks so much!

[@mariapascoal2511]

two years later, people are still finding this video and it's still great! thanks for the help :)

[@RoseNewland]

Wow, it's so rare I find such a clear, concise tutorial almost immediately when I search for a problem. Thankyou so much! Subscribed. :)

[@nukefactory]

Awesome, thank you!

[@knifefightacademy8781]

Dude... Googled how to ged rid of Widows and Orphans... hit the first result video and heard YOUR voice! Still helping me with iD long after I left the mag :) ...Nice work! JRD

[@nukefactory]

Oh wow, really? Didn't know Google liked me that much. Hopefully it was some help to you, anyway. Hope you guys are all well.

[@c.r.fulton4119]

Great video! Thanks for the clear info. For some reason, even though I have the GREP style applied, it does nothing to the runts.

[@specialeffectsgraphicsdesi9066]

Thank you so much for sharing the Runt elimination script and procedure. 🙏🏻

[@billpholde4816]

You are like a disembodied InDesign guru. Your video on the baseline grind, and this one, have been no less than a revelation. Thank you, Amigo!

[@oddhouseproduction]

Friggin genius. This is like a balm over a workflow of a short deadline..

[@nukefactory]

Wow, thanks!

[@susanlittleton3147]

I know this is so old, but thank you for this info and update GREP. I'm working on cleaning up my style sheets and this was the last bit I needed to amend. You know how it goes, quick and dirty to get the concept out to a client, then have to go back and define and fine-tune the "behind the curtain" bits.

[@nukefactory]

Oh yes, it's always fun to 'unmake the cake' after everything is finished. Glad this was some help to you.

[@BagusSetiyaAdiGunawan]

wow, thanks you..great tutorial !! I like it. May i request tutorial about using hyphenation? and how to unhyphenate some text in the same paragraph?

[@nukefactory]

That's actually a great suggestion. Thanks. Will look into it.

[@roberttaylor5997]

Excellent, thank you so much. What if the last two words of a paragraph are joined by a hyphen? Will this see them as one word and drag in a third word to make up the "two"? Is there any automated way to deal with that?

[@paulrosedesign1]

Excellent. Clear and concise and a game changer for me personally. Thank you

[@nukefactory]

Glad it helped

[@keramchugh]

you just changed my life. thank you! those darn runts have been killin' me!!!

[@nukefactory]

Glad it helped you

[@jodiwest]

Thank you!!! 2:50 to jump right to Runts

[@stevekricun5614]

Useful, clear concise, no BS. A rare find on KZbin. Thank you.

[@nukefactory]

Thank you

[@bensonewolf70]

The problem with this quick fix I'm finding is that yes, it stops widows and orphans, but if you're editing a novel, can make for uneven alignment on opposite pages, when you need to keep all the lines even until a chapter is over.

[@nukefactory]

You are absolutely right. It's a very rough 'fix' that's only useful in limited circumstances. The video is intended to be mostly about fixing runts, but because the different terms tend to be used interchangeably, the widows and orphans fix was included as well.

[@keramchugh]

i found a combination of the widows/orphans/runts fix along with justified text boxes works really well, with a secondary parent page with top-aligned text box for those final chapter pages, making minor paragraph adjustments where needed with H&J Violations highlighted. Watching this video sent me down a rabbithole of inDesign tricks - some of which I knew but a few i sure didn't, and my book design game definitely uplevelled this month.

[@thewalkerd]

best explanation on this topics that I've found yet. Thank you for your time sharing

[@nukefactory]

Glad it was helpful!

[@ianhuntercreates]

Really interesting. Thank you. Can I please ask (even though this vid is now a couple of years old) if the process for removal of widows and orphans impacts the bottom balance of the pages (I.e. the balanced alignment of the bottom line across pages)? Thanks.

[@nukefactory]

It does. This has been raised a few times in the comments since the video was published. In short, the main point of the video was to cover the use of GREP when dealing with runts. The inclusion of the short widows and orphans section was due to the terms all tending to be used interchangeably, to try to provide context. There was originally a longer segment in the video which further discussed methods of fixing the inevitable uneven columns that would result from using the Keep options, but it was removed in editing to get to the point (the GREP stuff) a bit faster.

[@ianhuntercreates]

⁠​⁠@@nukefactorythank you for the reply :) I’ve learned a lot over the last few weeks! All the best to you.

[@cleohuggins8026]

Super helpful, concise and clear. Using the GREP notation I was able to remove runts. However, in one case, the runt pulled up to the previous line - then, hyphenated itself. Now it's a demi-runt. (the word "colleagues." was the runt, after GREP it because "leagues." with "col-" at the end of the second to the last line.) I experimented with turning off hyphenation on the paragraph, but hyphenation appeared again after running the GREP. There may be a more elaborate GREP notation to handle hyphenation cases - but I will save that for a PhD.

[@nukefactory]

Interesting. There isn't anything in the GREP that should affect hyphenation - that's a different property. Shall do some experimenting...

[@macstyle2012]

I tried this, created a no break style - but the no break overrides styles already on the text. How do I run it when there is already a character style italic on the last two words? Do I need to make a no break for regular, one for italic and one for bold and run 3 searches so not to knock my styles out?

[@macstyle2012]

Just noticed that it also knocked out all my endnote superscript numbers at the end of each paragraph to non superscript numbers.

[@bruceaisher]

I appreciate the video - but unfortunately this did not work for the runts (I have always known them as "widowed words") Whenever I click the "nobreak" it results in a white screen. I tried your plain text edit but it did not help. I will just have to do it manually which will be a Royal pain in the arse for a 20+ page brochure.

[@stephendallas9709]

Whenever I check "no break" in character styles, it makes the page go blank for some reason. It shows a red plus sign on the box, but copy is waaaaay down there.

[@nukefactory]

The most likely cause is a very long word in your text. When 'No Break' is enabled, that word + another word (either before or after) become too long to fit in the text frame, and the text goes overset. This can happen with things like URLs or unusual words such as scientific terms that InDesign's dictionary doesn't know. It can also just happen if hyphenation is turned off. If all your text is disappearing then it's probable that the culprit is near the end of the first paragraph - try adding a space to cancel the GREP style and see if that fixes it.

[@catseyes11]

I was following along just fine until you got to the Runts section, how did you get your Runts character style you created into the paragraph styles panel?

[@nukefactory]

You open the paragraph style and go to the GREP Style section. Hit the 'New GREP Style' button and then you can select your Character Style from the drop down list next to where you see 'Apply Style:' Click on the default value of [None] to see the list of available Character Styles. It's actually not super-clear that this a drop-down unless you click on it first. Sorry for the confusion. It's in the video from here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/q5qnZqSHi92miNE

[@robertmarkusneiger6810]

Thank you, very clear and useful

[@ekaterinagarnyk6342]

That's a real magic! Love it. Thanks a lot.

[@georgiawilson8668]

BILLIANT!! Thank you 😍

[@georgiawilson8668]

I'm using it in every single document.... So easy! So exciting!!

[@MrsCambers]

Every time I try to do this Runt fix...after I exit out after I do it...my paragraph just...disappears?

[@nukefactory]

Apologies for delay in responding. I hope you were able to figure it out. If not (or just for reference if anyone else has a similar problem) this sounds like it could be caused by the line width exceeding the frame width. If there's and overset icon (red [+] bottom right of text frame) this is usually the reason. If you double-click the frame to go into text editing mode, you can hit CMD/Ctrl+Y to open the plain text view. You should see all of your text in there, and then you can go to the end of the offending paragraph and just add a space to cancel the GREP style.

[@AikaGraceWangwe]

Hello Hello! Thank you foir this. Does the Runts grep style still work? I've tried it today and still have runts, no change... Please help?

[@nukefactory]

It should still work. I use it pretty much daily and haven't noticed any problems. Almost all of the time, when it seems to not be working, it's because there's a trailing space at the end of the paragraph.

[@cherbearstare]

Hey there! This is super helpful, thank you... however, apparently, it's not applying to my bullet points. Do you know what the reason could be?

[@nukefactory]

Sorry you're having troubles. It has been tested with bulleted lists, and it should work. Any text the Paragraph/GREP style is applied to is affected, provided it has an end paragraph marker immediately after the last word in the paragraph. Are you sure there isn't a space hiding after the last word? Other than a space at the end of the paragraph, the only other way I've found to cancel it is by applying another Character Style to the text that specifically has 'No Break' turned off.

[@samuelelijas9002]

Excellent video!! Slightly different (still InDesign) query: is there a way to keep InDesign para and character styles on word docs that are linked, after they are updated - as clients keep updating the word docs and all the styling in InDesign is gone. I'm aware of Em Software 'WordsFlow' and I've used their DocsFlow for google docs in the past. The cost of it is quite high though as you have to keep buing a new license/upgrade for each new InDesign version. Any thoughts? Cheers

[@nukefactory]

WordsFlow seems to be the best way of handling that type of problem at the moment. The only way regular InDesign can handle this is if you are able to get the client to properly use Word styles within Word - these can then be mapped to the InDesign styles and *should* just transfer over when importing (although with Word it's usually not that simple). Another less likely option would be to try and get the clients to use InCopy. But usually nobody ever wants to give up Word. If the changes aren't extensive, sometimes in this situation getting them as tracked changes from the client and manually making the changes in the InDesign document can actually be the fastest solution. But that's always a risky way to do things.

[@lizamijburgh8456]

Thank you so much for this clear tutorial - super helpful!

[@nukefactory]

Glad it was helpful

[@Sig.Rezzonico]

Hi @Nukefactory I know you posted this a year ago, great workaround but I got a question, doesn't using paragraph styles override previous stlyes? Or by using the "Based on" option with a base style keeps everything "intact"? Also does this mean you need to have one set of these if you have i.e. bold, italic etc.? I'd love to include this into my workflow especially for documents with many pages :) If you reply to this, thank you❤

[@nukefactory]

For paragraph styles, 'Based on' is a way for a newly-created paragraph style to inherit the properties of an existing paragraph style. So, say, 'Style 1' has a font and color specified, and then 'Style 2' is created 'based on' that. 'Style 2' will have the same font and color properties. You could update the font in 'Style 1,' and that should also update automatically in 'Style 2', provided you haven't already changed that property in 'Style 2' directly. Once an inherited property is modified, it won't be changed by altering the base style any longer. So it's useful for things like global fonts, and typesetting rules (such as GREP styles), but typically falls apart for anything too granular. With regards to bolds and italics, that shouldn't require different paragraph styles because these are typically handled by Character Styles in InDesign. Needing styles specifying all font types, and paragraph properties, and weights etc is more of a QuarkXpress thing (or at least it used to be; haven't used Quark in awhile). InDesign has a more user-friendly hierarchy for its styles (Object>Paragraph>Character) where each level can contain instances of the next without requiring extra styles. So an object (typically a frame) can contain multiple paragraphs that can each have different paragraph styles applied, and each paragraph can have multiple character styles within it. So you might have a 'Body' paragraph style used throughout your document, and then any text within that which needs to be bold would just have the 'Bold' Character Style applied. The only time you would need to possibly double-up on style properties is with the character styles themselves, because they don't have any 'child' property that they can call on. So you'd need bold, italic, and also 'bold + italic' Character Styles because you can't apply more than one Character Style at a time to a given piece of text. Except with GREP Styles you actually can. You can have as many Character Styles as you like applied via the GREP Styles settings. Typically it's not a good idea to have too many though, because of the computational load. But if you had a style guide requirement where a particular word or name needed to always be formatted a certain way, specific font for example, you could do that via GREP Styles, and then still apply Character Styles as needed without ending up with overrides or needing a whole extra set of bold, italic etc styles just for that one word. Sorry, that's a really long-winded attempt at an answer. Not sure if it's what you needed, but hopefully there's something useful buried in there.

[@Sig.Rezzonico]

@@nukefactory Hi, thanks a lot for taking the time to write such a long explanation, surely it was useful 🤙

[@aimscaba9160]

Amazing video! But just a question, when I apply this to my text box, all my text disappear? I'm not too sure whats happening?

[@nukefactory]

Can only speculate, but it sounds like there may be a color (of 'nothing' - the white box with the red line through it) specified in the style sheet.

[@SethYoderMusic]

Excellent. Still works in 2024. :) Thanks!

[@nukefactory]

Good to know :-)

[@AmandaMearesMorris]

This is so helpful. Thank you!

[@nukefactory]

Glad it was helpful

[@southerncheat]

Brilliant, lifesaver, thank you!!!

[@nukefactory]

Glad it helped!

[@KIngaiune]

How would one write the Grep for end of story rather than paragraph (hidden character #)?

[@nukefactory]

The end of story is targeted by this GREP already. There are two types of notation that InDesign has for 'ends' in GREP: '$' or ' '. The '$' type targets both end of paragraph and end of story. If you need only the end of story, then the following string should find all the endings, but filter out the end of paragraphs, leaving only the end of story targeted (hopefully; haven't really tested it much). \

[@pratprat8655]

Awesome! Thank you!

[@nukefactory]

You're welcome!

[@archiefrencillo4061]

Very Helpful!

[@nukefactory]

Thanks. Happy that you found it helpful.

[@mwaseemaziz]

Great man

[@nikolavojvodic6805]

thank you! :)

[@kumaranimaster]

Lovely one😍

[@nukefactory]

Thanks

[@adamsfam549]

Thank YOU!! This was easy to follow! FINALLY! lol

[@nukefactory]

Glad it helped

[@eir3apps]

This will remove any previously set character style to those last two words...

[@nukefactory]

It shouldn't. GREP styles are actually the only way in InDesign to apply more than one Character style at a time to the same text.

[@author-rdh]

Gratitude arises. . . .

[@theitspossibleguy]

thank you for your video

[@nukefactory]

Thanks for watching

[@darthguppy67]

Thank you!!!!

[@RachelSAqua]

perfect! thanks so much for this usefull video

[@nukefactory]

Thanks, glad it was helpful.

[@lada1637]

thank you

[@nukefactory]

You're welcome

[@poppyorangeflower]

2:51 Runts

[@savvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvva]

"Super easy to fix" - yeah, sure, but it ain't normal that a column just becomes shorter… Text has to fill up the entire column before threading into the next one. Otherwise it not professional work. Would love to see some examples of your real life projects.

[@nukefactory]

Column lengths would need to be corrected using other methods (eg justification, editorial alterations, slight tweaks to tracking etc). There are a huge number of ways to address this on a case-by-case basis, but these are outside the scope of the video.