Adding or editing text

Okay, we have our document open, but we have a problem, it's mostly empty, empty document not good. Let's look at how we can get some text in here, edit it, and format it. The main tool in InDesign for manipulating text is the Type tool that's the one over here in the tool panel with a T on it. The Type tool lets me do two things in InDesign, it lets me create text-frames, that is frames that are going to contain text and it also lets me edit the text inside those frames. First, I'm going to take that Type tool and draw out a rectangle with it.

When I let go over the mouse button, you'll see that the Type tool created a text-frame and the text cursor is flashing inside of here, I can go ahead and start typing now. In this case though I don't want to type all the text that I want to put in here, so I'll delete that, instead, I want to place text from my hard drive. I can place either a Word file or an RTF file with fully-formatted text inside of any text-frame. I'll do that by going to the File menu, choosing Place, and then choosing the file I want to import.

In this case this brochure_intro.rtf file, when I click Open all the formatted text is placed inside the text-frame. Over here on the right side of the page I've an empty text-frame, and I can place text inside of this by typing in it. I'll click on top of the frame and then just start typing. I'd like this text to be in all caps, but instead of typing it over in all caps, I'm going to select it just by dragging over it and apply some formatting that will make it look like all caps. You change your text formatting in the Control panel, that's the panel that goes across the top of your screen.

To make this all caps, I'll simply select the All Caps button. When I click on that the text becomes all caps, it's not really all caps, it just looks that way. And if I click the button again it goes back, let's make that all caps and then let's change the color of one word, I'll just drag over that second word and change the fill color of the word. Once again I'll go to the Control panel and I'll choose a fill color from the middle of the Control panel, this gives me all the color swatches inside this document.

I'll talk about color swatches and how to create new ones in a later chapter. In this case I'm simply going to click on the blue swatch and then click down here, and then you'll see that the text is now blue. I'll make one more little text formatting change here. I'll select some text perhaps it's one sentence at the end of this text-frame and I'll make it italic. I'll do that by going to the Style popup menu on the left side of the Control panel, I'll choose Italic and the text changes to italic. Oops! I missed one letter, I better select that one letter and make that italic.

I'm going to use a keyboard shortcut, I love keyboard shortcuts, I'm going to press Command+Shift+I or Ctrl+Shift+I and that changes it to italic as well, it does the same thing as choosing it out of the Control panel. Now as you can see there are many other features up here in the Control panel for formatting text. InDesign is a text and typography powerhouse and I'm going to be covering lots, lots more about text in later chapters. Now this document is starting to come together, but you know what Shakespeare would say about this, Words, words, words! Bring on the pictures, hold on wheel, that's where we're headed next.