fixing widows/orphans/rags in illustrator

[nicrose]

is this possible in illustrator?? i can't find it in the help menu or internet.

nicrose

 

[Blue Velvet]

You'll have to do them manually with some help from the Justification and Hyphenation settings in the Paragraph palette's options (top right little triangle).

Using Illustrator for page-layout and industrial level type-wrangling is using the wrong tool... InDesign and QuarkXpress are more suited to this kind of work.

 

[nicrose]

thanks, blue velvet

i just decided to tighten the tracking on a paragraph with a widow. i really don't know how to use justification settings yet, and it (justification) scares me. i don't want those icky gaps between words. not that i even tried justification yet...

 

[Blue Velvet]

i don't want those icky gaps between words.

That's where word-spacing comes in i.e. as part of justification and hyphenation (H&Js).

Nice, even-coloured and balanced type is often a compromise between hyphenation and justification settings and also doing some underhanded but subtle work with soft returns, word-spacing, letter-spacing — and even horizontal-scaling of 99% as a last resort — to force paragraphs or stray widows and orphans back to a previous column or line. I've even asked people occasionally to alter a word here or there to fit copy into small spaces...

Things to avoid: changing the leading in specific places to fit copy, over-tight tracking.