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Some people can edit text in InDesign at amazing speed and accuracy. This isn't just a skill, but a knowledge. In this InDesign tutorial, we will show you several techniques to enhance the way you type text.

Selecting text

Selecting text may sound easy and I'm sure you know how to do this already, but in InDesign CS3, there are certain techniques you can use to increase productivity. For example, instead of highlighting a row of text, did you know you can triple-click on the line instead? You can always highlight text by clicking and dragging, but for better productivity, it is essential to learn the series of clicks. In InDesign, you can select a word, row, paragraph, or all the text using a pattern of clicks.

Single Click	Double Click
Click once with the text tool on any text frame or path to begin editing where you want to.	Click twice on any text to highlight the whole text.
Triple Click	Quadruple Click
Click three times to highlight an entire row of text.	Click four times to highlight the entire paragraph
Quintuple Click or Ctrl+A
Click five times to highlight all the text in the text frame. Unlike quadruple clicking, this selects all the text in the text frame while quadruple clicking only selects one paragraph. For example, if there are three paragraphs in the text frame, quintuple clicking will select all three paragraphs and quadruple clicking will only select one of those paragraphs. Clicking five times is a lot of clicks and sometimes you'll lose count. An easier way to select all the text is to press the hotkey Ctrl+A to select all.

Changing what triple-clicking does

You can customize the triple click input to select a line of text or a paragraph of text. Sometimes, people find themselves wanting to select, more often, a paragraph of text. You can change this in the Preferences. Choose Edit > Preferences > Type and edit the "Triple Click to Select a Line" option.

Reveal hidden characters

In InDesign, there are many nonprinting characters that are used to indicate spaces, tabs, ends of paragraphs, index markers, and end of stories. These characters are hidden by default but you can reveal them to help you with formatting text. To show or hide hidden characters, choose Type > Show Hidden Characters.

When editing text, I always show these hidden characters to avoid mistakes. For example, sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between a tab and a line of spaces. With these nonprinting characters now visible, I can see the difference between a tab and a line of spaces. These characters do not show up in the printed document; they only show up in the document window and story editor.

Use the story editor

Editing text on the document window can be quite a headache if you have a lot of columns and other layout elements. Whenever you need to type a lot of text or edit the text (but not the styles), use the story editor. The story editor lets you edit text in a clean environment that you can customize to your needs.

You can learn more about the story by reading our, "Using the Story editor" tutorial.