131: Thou shall not use Paragraph Composer in InDesign^®

Commentary Paragraph Composer is a feature (and the default setting) within InDesign^® that automatically controls line breaks in paragraphs. Although it might be a useful feature for inexperienced designers, I would never use it in my work. Instead, you should always make certain it is switched to the alternative Single-line Composer. The single-line mode allows the designer to control line breaks and not have InDesign^® making tracking and line-ending adjustments on your behalf. The central problem with Paragraph Composer is that, when making even the slightest adjustment, such as changing a word, the entire paragraph will reflow. If you have soft returns in the paragraph then this will cause further issues. For editors working on books, it’s just a nightmare. Work on the text completed previously can be undone by a piece of auto-formatting prompted by Paragraph Composer, and gaps in the body text can open up without the editor’s knowledge. As the designer, keep it single-line and make the line-ending adjustments yourself. As they say, no pain, no gain.