Affinity Publisher; Text justified left and right

[themonet]

Hi! Long time lurker for designer and photo, but recently purchased Publisher. So far so good. Anyway, I'm not super experienced with layout type software so there might be a better way to describe this, but I just don't know what it is. Basically I have a text frame and I want to have some text justified to the left and some justify to the right. Essentially like a chart, but I don't want any of the border lines that a chart might have. Does this make sense?

Thanks!

[jmwellborn]

48 minutes ago, themonet said:

Hi! Long time lurker for designer and photo, but recently purchased Publisher. So far so good. Anyway, I'm not super experienced with layout type software so there might be a better way to describe this, but I just don't know what it is. Basically I have a text frame and I want to have some text justified to the left and some justify to the right. Essentially like a chart, but I don't want any of the border lines that a chart might have. Does this make sense?

Thanks!

Is this what you are trying to achieve?  If so, type your text into the text frame, and then choose one of the Justify icons up on the context toolbar. I have made a Justify Left and a Justify right example for you.  Hope this helps!

 

[themonet]

Sort of. That was the workaround solution that I settled on. I was just hoping to do it in a single text frame so that I could be sure that the lines matched up. Maybe there's no way to do what I was looking to do.

[Old Bruce]

2 hours ago, themonet said:

Maybe there's no way to do what I was looking to do.

<PEDANT> @jmwellborn I have to point out that you have shown what I call Ragged Right and Ragged Left (align right and left as the kids would say), they are not Justified. </PEDANT>

I need more information in order to help. If jmwellborn's example is sort of what you want then that can be achieved with Paragraph Styles and can be applied to many paragraphs in one text frame.

What is confusing me is your use of 'chart'. If you could show me a chart shaped like how you want and have some text (or lines representing text) on it to show where the text should go I could perhaps help you out. I have a number of possible "like a chart" solutions but they are all mutually exclusive and vary wildly.

[walt.farrell]

6 hours ago, jmwellborn said:

I have made a Justify Left and a Justify right example for you.  Hope this helps!

No, as we have discussed before, you have made Align Left and Align Right examples.

Hover ove the icons and read the Tooltips, please. They are, from left to right, Align Left, Align Center, and Align Right. The 4th one is the justification icon, with pulldown choices for Justify Left, Justify Center, Justify Right, Justify All, and some spine-alignment options.

[jmwellborn]

@walt.farrell

People have been trying to sort me out since I learned to read at age 3.   Mensa was a bore so I stopped attending meetings.

[Vormgevertje]

Say I have this paragraph:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus.
Aliquam lorem ante, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a, tellus. 

The last line (Aliquam....tellus) is in the same paragraph, but starts at a new line (using shift-enter)

Now how can I Align this last line to the right?
When I select the line and click the 'align right' button, the whole paragraph aligns right. But I want the first part of the paragraph to align left!

 

[Vormgevertje]

My workaround is using a tab..
adjusting the tab so that the bottom line touches the right frame...

I just hoped it could be done easier...

 

[Andy05]

Why would you have a single line (or whatever amount of them) in the same paragraph, if you actually want to apply a different alignment to it? Why not creating a paragraph style based on the main one and change it's alignment? Then you don't have to use the new line function for something which it isn't made for.

There's a difference between new paragraph and new line for a reason.

[Vormgevertje]

I agree it doesn't happen often. But sometimes it just does...
Quite often I want a new line to be part of the paragraph. And sometimes, I want to align that line different from the paragraph.

For example:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. 
Monday April 12, 19:30
 

Suppose I would like the date and time to be centered (which is not possible now). 
In my opinion this is 1 paragraph. 
I guess you would say it's 2.

I guess then your solution will work..
I can make a new paragraph style.
In the main style it creates a blank line between paragraphs, but of course I can change that, so that it looks like a new line, but actually is another paragraph...

[Andy05]

Well, yes, that IS a different paragraph. If it wouldn't be, you wouldn't need a different alignment assigned to it. And yes, the spacing between (or here: above) the paragraph is also part of the format you'd have to assign to it.

You could also use a workaround as you used it in your previous example, by using a centered tab on that line.

But the immense benefit of doing it the right way by using different paragraphs and -styles shows up if you want to change something in your document. Like, in your example, you don't want to have that line bold any longer, but italic instead. Or float to the right or a different font size or... or... or.

You would achieve this for a whole document by just editing the paragraph style. With your "solution", you'd have to edit every single "not paragraph" in your document.

[Vormgevertje]

okay.. thanks..

[Old Bruce]

7 hours ago, Vormgevertje said:

Now how can I Align this last line to the right?
When I select the line and click the 'align right' button, the whole paragraph aligns right. But I want the first part of the paragraph to align left!

 

You could try using Justified Align Right

[Vormgevertje]

Didn't work. This also affects the whole paragraph.

I think Andy05 is right. I have to learn te work with paragraphs the ways it is designed.

I used to be an InDesign user. I'm not a pro, and learned InDesign by trial and error and tutorials. 
And the standard settings in InDesign is that a normal Hard return (new paragraph) has the same visual effect as a Shift-Enter (new line). As a matter of fact it looks exactly like how it works in MSWord.
So without realising it, I used paragraphs with each hard return.

Affinity Publisher makes a distinct difference in the standard settings. I'll just have to learn to work with that. No problem.

 

Learning is what makes life worth living...

[wonderings]

1 hour ago, Vormgevertje said:

Didn't work. This also affects the whole paragraph.

I think Andy05 is right. I have to learn te work with paragraphs the ways it is designed.

I used to be an InDesign user. I'm not a pro, and learned InDesign by trial and error and tutorials. 
And the standard settings in InDesign is that a normal Hard return (new paragraph) has the same visual effect as a Shift-Enter (new line). As a matter of fact it looks exactly like how it works in MSWord.
So without realising it, I used paragraphs with each hard return.

Affinity Publisher makes a distinct difference in the standard settings. I'll just have to learn to work with that. No problem.

 

Learning is what makes life worth living...

So if you want just the last line justified opposite you have to actually highlight the text and then select the justification. Now with the last line you have to actually hit the enter key to force it to be on the next line. If you don't it will justify the entire document as you described. 

 

Indesign works the same way.

[wonderings]

8 hours ago, Andy05 said:

Why would you have a single line (or whatever amount of them) in the same paragraph, if you actually want to apply a different alignment to it? Why not creating a paragraph style based on the main one and change it's alignment? Then you don't have to use the new line function for something which it isn't made for.

There's a difference between new paragraph and new line for a reason.

Lots of reasons why you would want to do this with the last line and my post above shows it is easily done. Some quotes are left justified and the author is right justified below, same for Bible verses and things like that. Not sure the reason behind it but do think it aesthetically looks good and makes text look less like a formal letter. 

[Andy05]

No,

your post proved exactly what I said. By pressing enter (as you suggested), you're creating a new paragraph. And that can get any format and alignment - independently from the previous paragraph.

If you have a quote and you want to show its source/author in a different style/alignment/whatever, it should not be the same paragraph. At all. That's typography basics. Used even in the Holy Book for centuries.

[wonderings]

8 minutes ago, Andy05 said:

No,

your post proved exactly what I said. By pressing enter (as you suggested), you're creating a new paragraph. And that can get any format and alignment - independently from the previous paragraph.

If you have a quote and you want to show its source/author in a different style/alignment/whatever, it should not be the same paragraph. At all. That's typography basics. Used even in the Holy Book for centuries.

Sorry missed the part where the hard enter was used. Thought people were just skipping over that little piece. The way it is setup is the correct way, it is a separate line within the same text box. Not sure how removing that step would save anytime worth the coding that would be involved to adjust the software to do that automatically for the last line of a paragraph. 

[Vormgevertje]

I think we all agree now how it should be done.

The problem was that I did not learn the difference between a new line and a paragraph correctly.

So your last remark is correct. There is no reason at all to do it differently. 
So from now on I will do it as you all told me.

Thanks everyone. I'm happy.

[Andy05]

Doing it the right way is worth it. If you ever have to produce something comparable for a customer, you'll be happy that you could just edit all of those "sources' styles" by editing a paragraph style at once—just because the customer wants a different font or alignment. 😉