Text indenting first line automatically

[Maureen Small]

I created a text box, and initially copied and pasted text into it. It indented the first line. I couldn't figure out why, so I deleted the text box, created a new one, and this time tried typing the text in. It still does the same thing. In the attached screen shot, you can see the text ruler. There's no indent showing. There's no indentation showing in the settings either. This is not centered; it is fully justified. On a side note, the word "sharing" in the text box is Avenir Light, which should look exactly the same as the text in the top left side of the screen shot. Clearly, it is darker, and I have no idea why either. Can someone help me figure this out? Thanks.

[GarryP]

Strange.
I’ve tried a few things and haven’t been able to replicate this. However, I’ve not done exhaustive tests.
One thing I noticed is that the Left Indent marker (pointed to by the arrow in my attached image) isn’t shown on the ruler. Not sure how this could happen unless it was dragged over to the extreme right (so it’s hidden by the Right Indent marker) and then the First Line Indent was dragged back to the left.
 Is there any chance that you can share the document? Doesn’t have to be the whole thing, just cut it down (in a copy of the document, not the original) to only the frame of text you’re having a problem with.
As for the ‘thicker’ text, if it’s definitely not been set to Bold or a similar variant, have you made sure that the text hasn’t been given an outline stroke?

[Dan C]

Hi Maureen Small

Sorry to see you're having trouble! I too have been unable to replicate this, so it would certainly help to see a copy of your document. Could you please upload this to the following link and let me know once this has been done?

https://www.dropbox.com/request/PXjGaAOVtjlS4tBD5TQS

Many thanks in advance!

[Maureen Small]

I really appreciate your help. Dan, I uploaded the file to Dropbox. I've also uploaded it here for Garry to see. 

The stroke on the font is a good idea to look for. Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time finding that in Affinity. I'm fairly new to it - used InDesign for years but when I got a new computer last spring decided it was too expensive to purchase. Can you point me in the right direction to look for stroke?

 

20Jan26.afpub

[Dan C]

Thanks for your file Maureen

I can see this text box has a Left Indent applied, once I returned this to a value of 0, I noticed that the First Line Indent then had this same value applied - but only once removing the Left Indent value did this show. The exact reason for this I'm unsure of currently, but I'll be logging this with our QA team for further investigation.

Once the First Line Indent is also returned to 0, you should find this text box behaves as expected - 

Your text does have a Stroke applied to it, which can be seen in the Stroke Studio (usually located in the top right of the app, but if you can't see it here please make sure that View>Studio>Stroke is ticked.

With the text selected, you can see this Stroke value in the Stoke Studio, and remove it as required - 

I hope this helps!

[Maureen Small]

Yes! Very helpful! I found stroke under "view." I had been looking under text effects. Thank you so much! 

[JohnKinley]

I had the same issue with my text boxes. For the life of me I hadn't figured out what was going on. I stumbled upon this thread and started clicking around. All of my values on my spacing palette were set to zero. However, once I started to manually plug in zeros again, the paragraph indentation leading value suddenly switched from 0 to .25 even though it was registering zero before hand. I am not sure why this occurred, but I was able to see where the issue was and correct the text boxes from doing it further.

 

[Bebebebenny]

Just experiencing this now, and came here searching for an answer. 
Zero values for everything in the paragraph/spacing palette, but even so the first (and just the first) line of my text was indented.

None of the tips above helped me, but I finally got rid of the first line indent by... drum roll... removing the rounded corner of the text box.

It seems that no matter the distance from the corner to the text, a round courner will affect the text bounding box so that the first line is pushed to the side — even if the the text margin to the box edge is so big they have no business affecting each other.

As far as I've been able to figure out now, the only way to have multi-line text in a box with rounded corners is to have to separate objects, i.e. a text on top of an unrelated box.

Surely this must be a bug?

/B. 

[MikeTO]

10 hours ago, Bebebebenny said:

Zero values for everything in the paragraph/spacing palette, but even so the first (and just the first) line of my text was indented.

None of the tips above helped me, but I finally got rid of the first line indent by... drum roll... removing the rounded corner of the text box.

It seems that no matter the distance from the corner to the text, a round courner will affect the text bounding box so that the first line is pushed to the side — even if the the text margin to the box edge is so big they have no business affecting each other.

As far as I've been able to figure out now, the only way to have multi-line text in a box with rounded corners is to have to separate objects, i.e. a text on top of an unrelated box.

Surely this must be a bug?

Could you share a test file? I can't duplicate this issue.

 

[Bebebebenny]

 

 

I think you are reproducing it just fine. 

When the text is hugging the border as per your example, it seems reasonable to adjust its outline to fit the box.
But when the text is further in, far away from any chance to be cropped by the border, adjusting it along the box edges makes no sense.

Example below:

Small radius.
Large margins (insets) between text and edge.
Literal request to have zero indent on first (or any) line, and text justified to margins.

Even so, there is no way for me to have even edges on the text -- just because the box is rounded.
 

 

[MikeTO]

I see what you're saying now but I don't think it's a bug, it's just not working the way you want it to.

The Text Frame > Insets feature shifts the frame inward, not the bounding box of the frame. In the case of a non-rectangular shape, it's as if the entire shape was reduced by the entered amount. It doesn't matter whether it's a rounded rectangle, an ellipse, or an irregular path, Publisher will just shift it inward.

Instead of using Text Frame Insets consider using Paragraph > Spacing > Left and Right Indent to achieve the look you want.

[Bebebebenny]

 

Ah. You may be right that it is not a bug, and thanks for showing me how to do it. But may I be so bold as to still call it a workaround?

What I find odd (and unintutive) is this:

To have a straight text with equal margins from the edge in a rounded box, this means I have to 
1. set a top and bottom margin in the text frame, but NOT a left and right
2. set a left and right indentation in the paragraph settings (but not top and bottom because there is none).

In the screenshot below, the border is set to 6mm, as are the top and bottom margins, and the left and right indentation.

Even so: while on a pixel-peeping level for sure, do take a look at the left margin selection/horisontal placement of the line.
For whatever reason, the second (!) and last visible lines are indented with a fraction more than the others.
This does lead me to believe that this is not the prescribed way to do this — especially since if using NO rounded corners, and 6mm insets in all four directions, the edges are exactly even. So something here is not behaving as intended.

Again, thanks for the workaround! But given the current penchant for designing textboxes with rounded edges, I would find it reasonable to not have the rounding affect the content when outside of the reach of the roundness. 

 

[Samuli]

First line indent showing as 0 when it is not has still not been fixed in 2024 and in V2. This thread saved my day.

The rounded corner issue is separate.