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Setting Italic Correction
You can correct the spacing in a line when italic formatting is involved. Often, when you italicize a word in the middle of a sentence, the last letter of that word has less space between it and the following word (due to the fact that it is italicized and the following word is not). Using italic correction, you can increase this space between the italicized word and the non-italicized word.
This can be done through styles or by using local formatting. Using styles is usually recommended because the setting is automatically applied to any content using that style throughout the project, whereas local formatting affects only the particular content that you are working on.
Best Practice: Use external style sheets instead of local formatting.
How to set italic correction using a style
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Open the topic style sheet that you want to modify.
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Make sure the appropriate medium is selected. If you are not using style sheet mediums for your different outputs or if you want all mediums to have the same settings, just leave the medium set to "default" and continue.
Mediums can be used if you want to use one group of settings for online output types (DotNet Help, HTML Help, WebHelp, WebHelp Plus, WebHelp AIR, WebHelp Mobile) and another group of settings for print-based output types (Adobe PDF, XHTML, Microsoft XPS, Microsoft Word, Adobe FrameMaker). For example, you might use the "default" medium for your online outputs and you might use the "print" medium for your print outputs.
See About Style Sheet Mediums.
- In the local toolbar, make sure the first button displays
(which means that the Simplified view is currently shown in the editor). If the button displays 
instead, then click it.
- In the upper-left corner of the editor, click in the Show Styles field
and select Show Character Styles.
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Select the appropriate character style.
Note: You can also use this property for paragraphs, headings, and other styles.
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In the local toolbar of the editor, click 
. The Properties dialog opens.
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Select the Advanced tab.
- In the Italic Correction section, click the down arrow in the upper-right corner and select Length.
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Enter a number in the field and use the down arrow in the lower-right corner to select a unit of measurement. See About Units of Measurement.
This is the amount of space that will be added after an italic word and the next letter in the paragraph.
- In the Properties dialog, click OK.
- Press CTRL+S or click
to save your work.
- Open the topic.
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Select the content for which you want to set italic correction.
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Select Format>Font.
The Font Properties dialog opens.
- Select the Advanced tab.
- In the Italic Correction section, click the down arrow in the upper-right corner and select Length.
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Enter a number in the field and use the down arrow in the lower-right corner to select a unit of measurement. See About Units of Measurement.
This is the amount of space that will be added after an italic word and the next letter in the paragraph.
- In the Properties dialog, click OK.
- Press CTRL+S or click to save your work.
Note: In order to see the results of this feature in the XML Editor, you must be using Print Layout mode, as opposed to Web Layout mode. See About Layout Modes.
Note: Italic correction is not supported in Microsoft Word or Adobe FrameMaker output types.
WHAT'S NEXT?
After editing a style, you can apply it to content in a topic. See Applying Styles to Topic Content.
See Also
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