Horizontal and vertical nudge
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Nudge allows you to place (snap) page objects on invisible steps between column and module guides.
On the following screenshot, the top left corner of the text frame snaps to the horizontal nudge of 20pt and vertical nudge of 15pt. In other words, its horizontal offset from the closest column guide is exactly 20pt, and from the closest module guide exactly 15pt.
Nudge is invisible, although you can make it visible by means of a custom script, and then use it as a visible page baseline grid. Typically, you will prefer to use page module height for the visible page baseline grid.
Set nudge either on the master page level and/or at the page layer level - the latter having precedence over the former. |
In an ideal case, the nudge value should be the equal to the body text leading. This is simple to achieve if the newspaper has only one most frequently used leading for body text. Example: the body text leading is 9pt. Set the module height to 54pt that corresponds to 6 lines of body text. Set the vertical nudge to 9pt. If it is not acceptable to sync the module height to the body leading, then at least keep the module height as a multiple of the vertical nudge, no matter the leading. This will result in an even vertical nudge. Example: The module size is 60pt. The possible appropriate values of vertical nudge would be: •4 even steps with 15pt of nudge •6 even steps with 10pt of nudge •10 even steps with 6pt of nudge •12 even steps with 5pt of nudge If it is not acceptable to keep the module height as a multiple of the vertical nudge, then set the vertical nudge to any value. The resulting steps will be uneven. Example: Assuming that the module height is 19.5pt, and the vertical nudge is 6 pt, the nudge steps will be: •step #1 = 0pt vertical offset •step #2 = 6pt vertical offset, so the distance is 6pt •step #3 = 13.5pt vertical offset, so the distance is 7.5pt. •step #4 = 19.5pt vertical offset, so the distance is 6pt. How small should be a "small" nudge? It makes no sense to specify a vertical nudge to very small values, e.g. 2pt, because such small steps would practically invalidate the snapping. See instead Adjust snap-to zone. |
Objects snaps to the nudge value when you drag them by mouse, if snapping is enabled and if nudge is greater than 0. Objects do not snap to the nudge value if you move them by arrow keys, and the initial position of objects was not aligned to the nudge. |