Enter glyphs by way of the Glyphs panel. The panel initially shows glyphs in the font where the cursor is located, but you can view a different font, view a type style in the font (for example, Light, Regular, or Bold), and make the panel display a subset of glyphs in the font (for example, math symbols, numbers, or punctuation symbols).
A. Show subset of glyphs B. Search box C. Tool tip displaying glyph ID, Unicode, and Name D. Font list E. Font style
By moving the pointer over a glyph, you can read its CID/GID value, Unicode value, and name in a tool tip.
- Click the cycle widget (it’s located to the left of the word “Glyphs” on the Glyphs panel) to change views of the panel. Clicking the widget presents these views in succession: the collapsed panel, the entire panel, and the panel without recently used glyphs.
- Click the Zoom In or Zoom Out buttons in the lower-right corner of the Glyphs panel.
- Resize the Glyphs panel by dragging the lower-right corner.
A glyph is a specific form of a character. For example, in certain fonts, the capital letter A is available in several forms, such as swash and small cap. You can use the Glyphs panel to locate any glyph in a font.
OpenType fonts such as Adobe Caslon™ Pro provide multiple glyphs for many standard characters. Use the Glyphs panel when you want to insert these alternate glyphs in your document. You can also use the Glyphs panel to view and insert OpenType attributes such as ornaments, swashes, fractions, and ligatures.
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Access special font properties of OpenType fonts for greater typographic control! Here's a quick tutorial: Work with glyphs more easily.
You can insert common characters such as em dashes and en dashes, registered trademark symbols, and ellipses.
If special characters that you use repeatedly do not appear on the list of special characters, add them to a glyph set that you create.
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Select a different font and type style, if available. From the Show menu, choose Entire Font. Or, if you selected an OpenType font, choose from a number of OpenType categories.
Choose a custom glyph set from the Show menu. (See Create and edit custom glyph sets.)
InDesign tracks the previous 35 distinct glyphs you inserted and makes them available under Recently Used in the first row of the Glyphs panel (you have to expand the panel to see all 35 glyphs on the first row).
- To clear a selected glyph from the Recently Used section, right-click (Windows®) or Control-click (Mac OS) a glyph in the Recently Used section, and then choose Delete Glyph From Recently Used.
- To clear all recently used glyphs, choose Clear All Recently Used.
If you select a character in an InDesign document and the character has at least one alternate glyph, InDesign displays an on-context menu containing the available alternates.
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If you select a word, a blue underline appears under the character. If you hover the mouse over the blue underline, then the on-context menu is displayed.
For easy selection, the Glyphs panel allows you to display characters for only the selected OpenType attributes. You can select various options from the Show menu in the Glyphs panel.
Note:
Do not confuse these options with those that appear on the Glyphs panel menu, which let you apply forms to selected text. (See Apply OpenType font attributes.)
The options displayed vary depending on which font is selected. For information on applying OpenType font attributes, see Apply OpenType font attributes. For more information on OpenType fonts, see www.adobe.com/go/opentype.
A glyph set is a named collection of glyphs from one or more fonts. Saving commonly used glyphs in a glyph set prevents you from having to look for them each time you need to use them. Glyph sets are not attached to any particular document; they are stored with other InDesign preferences in a separate file that can be shared.
You can determine whether the font is remembered with the added glyph. Remembering fonts is useful, for example, when you are working with dingbat characters that may not appear in other fonts. If a glyph’s font is remembered, but the font is missing, the font’s square appears in pink in the Glyphs panel and the Edit Glyph Set dialog box. If a font is not remembered with an added glyph, a “u” appears next to the glyph, indicating that the font’s unicode value determines the appearance of the glyph.
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To bind the glyph to its font, select Remember Font With Glyph. A glyph that remembers its font ignores the font applied to the selected text in the document when the glyph is inserted into that text. It also ignores the font specified in the Glyph panel itself. If you deselect this option, the Unicode value of the current font is used.
To view additional glyphs, choose a different font or style. If the glyph is not defined with a font, you cannot select a different font.
To remove a glyph from the custom glyph set, choose Delete From Set.
To change the order in which glyphs are added to the set, choose an Insert Order option. Unicode Order is not available if Insert At Front or Append At End was selected when the glyph set was created.
Custom glyph sets are stored in files kept in the Glyph Sets folder, a subfolder of the Presets folder. You can copy glyph set files to other computers and in so doing make custom glyph sets available to others. Copy glyph set files to and from these folders to share them with others:
Windows XP
Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Adobe\InDesign\[Version]\[Language]\Glyph Sets
Windows Vista and Windows 7
Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\InDesign\[Version]\[Language]\Glyph Sets
You can specify different quotation marks for different languages. These quotation mark characters appear automatically during typing if the Use Typographer’s Quotes option is selected in the Type section of the Preferences dialog box.
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Choose Type > Insert Special Character > Quotation Marks > Straight Double Quotation Marks or Straight Single Quotation Mark (Apostrophe).
Deselect the Use Typographer’s Quotes option in the Type section of the Preferences dialog box, and then type the quotation mark or apostrophe.
Press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+' (Windows) or Shift+Command+Option+' (Mac OS) to switch between turning on and off the Use Typographer’s Quotes preferences option.
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The character frequently used to indicate feet, arcminutes, or minutes of time is the prime mark. It looks like a slanted apostrophe. The character frequently used to indicate inches, arcseconds, or seconds of time is the double prime mark. These symbols are different from apostrophes and double quotation marks. Some fonts include the prime and double prime marks. Use the Glyphs panel to insert these marks. If the font doesn’t have a prime or double prime mark, insert the straight quotation mark, and italicize it.
A white space character is a blank space that appears between characters. You can use white-space characters for many different purposes, such as preventing two words from being broken at the end of a line.
Note:
Representative symbols of the white-space characters appear when you choose Type > Show Hidden Characters.
Ideographic Space
This is a space that is based on a full-width character in Asian languages. It wraps to the next line as with other full-width characters.
Nonbreaking Space
The same flexible width as pressing the spacebar, but it prevents the line from being broken at the space character.
Nonbreaking Space (Fixed Width)
A fixed width space prevents the line from being broken at the space character, but does not expand or compress in justified text. The fixed width space is identical to the Nonbreaking Space character inserted in InDesign CS2.
Flush Space
Adds a variable amount of space to the last line of a fully justified paragraph, useful for justifying text in the last line. (See Change Justification settings.)
Thin Space
One‑eighth the width of an em space. You may want to use a thin space on either side of an em dash or en dash.
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