Hi Žydrius,
as far as I know, the answer is no. Maybe there’s something new in CS4?

I use a little workaround that is almost as fast as having only one style:

• set up two paragraph styles: one without indent (#1), one with indent (#2)
• within the style options for #1, set the ‘next’ parameter to ‘#2’
• select all your text and ‘apply paragraph style #1 and then next’*, via a right-click (control-click) in the paragraph style palette

*) I don’t know how the exact wording is in the English version
F

I’ve never touched InDesign, but do find it hard to believe that this isn’t a viable thing to do with paragraph styles. IIRC, didn’t QuarkXPress allow for this way back in version 3?

The simplest way to achieve this, in my opinion, is the good old-fashioned way. One paragraph style for your basic text style. Include a tab position at the first indent. Use a tab at the beginning of every paragraph except the first one. Seems unsophisticated, I know. But after years of trying to be fancy about it, I realized that simplest is best.

— K.

I’d second what Kent says. Been doing it that way for 25 years, seems to work fine.

You can set the tab position in your paragraph style(s), so each time you hit the tab, you will get the indent. And of course, with different paragraph styles, you can have a different indent value. I frequently use 1 pica for a text paragraph indent, but 1 em (further) for an extract paragraph indent.

You know, when I started out, I thought “tabs are for typewriters, we have computers now” and I used to try to work with paragraph indents in styles. But that just led to a population of multiple parent/child paragraph styles. Not to mention the fact that I was constantly having to remove the tabs that copywriters and editors were putting in their copy (silly editors ;-). And then applying all these multiple paragraph styles.

Needless to say, it didn’t take long to see the error of my ways. Fancy-schmancy; simple is better.

Now, on the off-chance that I get a manuscript without tabs, all I have to do is search for paragraph breaks and replace with para break + tab. Then remove the few that come after a heading. Not too onerous.

— K.

Ijust realized that what I wrote wasn’t clear — When I said different paragraph styles, I meant different elements, like (1) text, and (2) prose extract, each using a different tab setting for the paragraph indent.

We set up a manuscript for import just like Kent. The editors I love are the one that sometimes use a tab and sometimes five word spaces (they think it is the same).

“The editors I love are the one that sometimes use a tab and sometimes five word spaces (they think it is the same).”

The editor of one of my books actually refused to get acquainted with the Quark they were using at the publisher’s. Being an “intellectual” he saw no point in learning the skills of the craftspeople. Eventually he got fired.

set the paragraph indent to 5 point or whatever and set the first line indent to just 0 point? Wouldn’t that work?

—
arjun

Florian, Your way is almost perfect. Thanks.

Anyway it is so 90-ies:)

Adobe should make it possible with nested styles or something similar, i think.

There should be timesaver for good typography:)

Ž.

>> * set up two paragraph styles: one without indent (#1), one with indent (#2)
* within the style options for #1, set the ‘next’ parameter to ‘#2’
* select all your text and ‘apply paragraph style #1 and then next’*, via a right-click (control-click) in the paragraph style palette

The above works fine as long as you have simple text: no subheads, no spacebreaks, no extracts where the following text does not begin a new paragraph, no lists with the same as above, etc. etc. Which is why Kent & I & others use the tab.

If you only had one paragraph per chapter to fix, I can’t shed many tears.

There should be timesaver for good typography:)

It has been my experience that most “timesavers” actually hinder good typography. Those time savers make assumptions that might fit one person’s needs, but get in the way of others. YMMV.