Help with fonts for manuscript

[disfasia]

I am making a manuscript and i have some questions:

1. Why can't I change line spacing from line measures to pt measures?

2. Someone wrote me this: "One thing I would do, though, to insure that none of the text falls into the trim zone is to set the left and right paragraph indents to 1.5cm (0.06 inch). This will give you a small bit of white space between the dotted trim lines and the text."

What does this mean and how can I do this on Nisus?

3. Another suggestion is this: "Roughly, TNR at 12pt in Word is when set using single spacing, about 12/13.8 . . . that's just shy 2 pts of leading, which is fairly standard. " What does this mean "leading"?

4. What does this mean? "Special: 1st line indented 0.2" for paragraphs"

Thanks

[martin]

Hi disfasia, hopefully I can clear some of those points up for you:

1. Why can't I change line spacing from line measures to pt measures?

You can do that; the easiest way is via the Paragraph palette. In the palette, under the "Spacing" tab, set the mode to "fixed" and then adjust the point value however you like:

palette.png (31.43 KiB) Viewed 3508 times

2. Someone wrote me this: "One thing I would do, though, to insure that none of the text falls into the trim zone is to set the left and right paragraph indents to 1.5cm (0.06 inch). This will give you a small bit of white space between the dotted trim lines and the text."

What does this mean and how can I do this on Nisus?

It sounds like they are talking about the left/right indents for your paragraph, but I'm not sure what they mean by "trim zone" or "trim lines". Perhaps they are referring to the paper/page margins? But that doesn't make much sense, because text can't fall into the margin, so I don't understand why they'd also recommend setting up left/right paragraph indents; you could just make your paper/page margins larger.

In any case, if you want to adjust the paragraph indents, you can use the little blue "gumdrop" indent markers on the ruler:

markers.png (20.62 KiB) Viewed 3507 times

You can drag-drop any of those blue markers to adjust the indents by hand, or you can double-click a marker to bring up a sheet that allows you to adjust the indents numerically:

sheet.png (33.72 KiB) Viewed 3507 times

3. Another suggestion is this: "Roughly, TNR at 12pt in Word is when set using single spacing, about 12/13.8 . . . that's just shy 2 pts of leading, which is fairly standard. " What does this mean "leading"?

Leading is basically just another way to say line spacing. Wikipedia can tell you more about the nuances. But practically speaking, Nisus Writer doesn't have a "leading" feature; you'll just adjust the line spacing/height.

4. What does this mean? "Special: 1st line indented 0.2" for paragraphs"

It sounds like the first line of every paragraph should have its indent set to 0.2" (or perhaps have an additional 0.2" of indenting). You can achieve this using the "first line indent", which you can set in Nisus Writer using any one of the following:
1. The little blue indent marker on the ruler. The first line indent marker is the one pointing downward.
2. The "first line indent" field in the indent editor sheet (which you can access by double-clicking any blue ruler indent marker).
3. The "first line" field in the Paragraph palette, under the "Indents" tab.

Hopefully that helps!