Another Way to Really Cure the Bounce

There is a way to completely eliminate the bounce—do not use Word for the final layout. Most people do not realize the difference between a word processing program and a page layout program, mostly because the later isn’t in common use. Page layout programs do exactly that, lays out all the text and pictures just where you want them. It can adjust spacing—whether text or around pictures—with some precision. Microsoft Office actually has a page layout program called Publisher. However, it is really aimed at the home and school markets, so spacing control is not rigorous. Professionals, the ones who put all those magazines, brochures and print ads together, use Adobe InDesign. When I was working at the University of Maryland, Baltimore that is what I used to layout grants as well. I even taught my husband to use it. It has three major advantages, one is no more bouncing pictures, the second is the way the text and figures are linked to InDesign and the third is that line spacing is very precise. The first is obvious, the second important, but it is the third that most researchers should know about.

Single spacing, 6 lines per inch (specified by NIH and other funding agencies), is supposed to be equivalent to 12pt line spacing. In Word, those 12 pts are roughly an average of the usual fonts used (Times Roman, Ariel, Calibri). If you stick with the most common fonts, you will get approximately 6 lines per inch with single spacing, but some of the inches will have less than 6 lines per inch. However, in InDesign you actually select the spacing by the points matched to the font you are using. You are wondering why this is important. Because InDesign is precise in the line spacing, you actually get more lines per page, 3-6 lines more, depending on the font. Over a 12-page grant proposal that means you get an extra 6-12 inches of space!!! Who wouldn’t want that! And it maintains the 6 lines per inch rule.

Besides the spacing control, InDesign does something else, it links directly to documents and files. That means the Word document can be linked to InDesign (the default is unlinked for text files, but you can change that). Any change you make in Word, gets imported into InDesign. However, the reverse is not true. You cannot change formatting or text in InDesign and have it go back to Word. So, InDesign cannot be used in lieu of a word processing program when you want to track changes or edits. However, the exception is font spacing. Single spacing in Word is always set at 12pt in InDesign, thereby giving you the extra page space immediately. My edits in Word, with tracking on, will come over, as long as I set the Tracking to show ‘Simple Mark-up’.

More importantly, figure files can remain in Photoshop or Illustrator native formats (not Corel, though). You do not have to have them saved as jpegs or pngs. These files are automatically linked. If you need to change them, you can go directly from InDesign to either Photoshop or Illustrator, make the changes and have those changes show up in your InDesign document. If you have adjusted the size of the figure, which of course is common, those changes are applied to the updated file. Text wrapping and spacing around figures are also easier to control. All of this makes managing figures much easier. And when you are done with the document, you can package all the files together and save the package, so you never have to go looking for a figure file that you may have used several times and saved in multiple places.

InDesign is part of the Adobe Creative Suite. If you have Photoshop and Illustrator, you probably have the Suite but haven't used all the parts. Check out InDesign; if my husband can use it, anyone can!