It's because of the Paragraph Composer/Single Line Composer options. This will clarify:
http://www.lynda.com/home/tutoriallanding.aspx?lpk4=56478

Good luck!

By the way, and with all due respect, you're using fake small caps in your example. You may want to use an OpenType font that has real small caps built in or a family that has a set of real small caps in a separate font file.

No idea what I'm talking about? Fake small caps are computer-downsized capital figures that look lighter/thinner than the surrounding characters. Real small caps are the same weight and proportion to the rest of the characters in the font file.

Hope this helps...

Double thank yous. I'm in my first year of design. I can't wait to pass on that first tidbit on to my typography prof who kept insisting that I just wasn't seeing a return space.

You may also have "balance ragged lines" turned on. Search in InDesign help for where to find it and try turning it off.

Another point I would like to make: app. you use the standard InDesign-settings for H&J — where letterspacing is allowed. That is an absolute no-no for serious typographers.

Justification can be found as an option in the Paragraph-pallette. Change the settings here:

Word Spacing: depending on the typeface — I mostly use around 80% Minimum, 90% Desired, 100% Maximum
Letter Spacing: 0% overall
Glyph Scaling: is considered a BAD thing, but I will allow 1% either way (99%, 1005, 101%).

Auto Leading is also BAD when set to anything else than 100%. You want to be in control.

This is also where you can reset the Composer microspective talks about.

You could always just break the lines in that paragraph manually instead of letting InDesign choose where to break them.

Use a forced line break (Shift-Return) rather than a paragraph break (Return), so InDesign will know you're not starting a new paragraph. You may need to manually break several lines since InDesign may reflow other lines above and below when you insert a manual break.

If you open the type menu and click show hidden characters (at the bottom of the menu) InDesign will display forced line breaks and paragraphs etc.

The image provided in the first post shows hidden characters already.

@Bert — You're absolutely right in suggesting those settings, but they shouldn't be causing the odd letterspacing since the type isn't justified. Rather, it looks like lvthomas has tracked out the small caps (appropriate) but has also applied that extended tracking to the body copy (inappropriate).

Agreed. Although note that it only occurs sporadically, not even on a line-by-line basis. I don't want to take this discussion away from the issue at hand, but it's possible the uneven spacing may have something to do with your problem.

Josh

Not to get off on a tangent, but those look like automatically generated small caps [scaled caps] to me.