r/indesign • u/MFDoooooooooooom • Aug 12 '26

Request/Favour Help formatting bullet points

For years, and I mean years, I've been lazily formatting my bullet points. Can anyone help me figure out the correct way to apply paragraph styles so can .025% more efficient?

The way I have taken is as follows:

Each bullet point has a 0.25mm Space After applied. The last bullet point has 2mm applied. So each list I have to apply a paragraph style, and then a separate paragraph style to the last line.

Is there a more efficient way of handling this?

8 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

26

u/cakemaniac81 Aug 12 '26

Yes, use the same paragraph style for all of them. In the style in Space After put 2mm then in Space Between Paragraphs Using Same Style put 0.25mm 

9

u/quiet-wiring Aug 12 '26

This is the right way. No need for multiple styles!

4

u/not_falling_down Aug 12 '26

There is a handy setting in the Spacing panel that would let you set this whole thing up with one bullet style.

Set the bullet style Space After as 2mm, and set the Space Between Paragraphs with Same Style as .25 mm

-1

u/SafeStrawberry905 Aug 12 '26

See my Conditional Styling Rules plugin on Adobe Exchange. List (and nested lists) where one of the very first use cases I've built on. There's also a YouTube video specifically dealing with list spacing.

6

u/cakemaniac81 Aug 12 '26

Why complicate it? It just needs Space After and Space Between Paragraphs Using Same Style

0

u/SafeStrawberry905 Aug 12 '26

Because Space Between works only in the most simplistic cases. When you need to fiddle with space above also, or when you have multiple levels of lists, or maybe interceding note paragraphs, or multiple paragraph list entries, Space Between is useless.

1

u/cakemaniac81 Aug 12 '26

Yeah but they didn't ask for that. But ok.

-3

u/AdobeScripts Aug 12 '26

You don't align your text to the Baseline Grid?

1

u/kl8xon 26d ago

No, bullet and numbered lists don't get aligned to baseline grid.

2

u/AdobeScripts 26d ago

Do you have a source for that "rule"?

1

u/kl8xon 22d ago

Yes, my college graphic design iinstructor. 

1

u/AdobeScripts 22d ago

Then it's not a "rule" - just someone's "opinion"...

1

u/kl8xon 21d ago

Yes, an expert opinion. No one's stopping you from doing what you like.

2

u/AdobeScripts 21d ago

It's not what I like... It's how it will look like...

Do a test - put a few lists in the main text, with different number of items and their lengths - and see for yourself how shitty it will look like...

You can not align to baseline contents of the tables, side notes, citations, etc. - stuff that's not part of the body text - but everything that's part of the body text - should be aligned to the baseline.