by Chad Neuman

This is part 3 of 5. Be sure to follow along with the support files from part 1.

Step One
Open the newspaperlayout.indd we created in part 1 and 2. Open the Pages palette and double-click on page 1 icon to navigate to the first page.

Step Two
Let’s place the first article on page one. Go to File>Place and select “article1.doc” from the support files and click Open. Be sure Replace Selected Item is unchecked, in case you have an object selected, it won’t replace it.

Step Three
The cursor will turn into an icon which previews the beginning of the text that is about to be placed. We could place the text by clicking-and-dragging, but instead of that, let’s just click once about one fifth from the top of the first page in the left-most column. The text will be place within the column and run down automatically to the bottom of the page.

Step Four
Near the bottom of the first column, there should be a small red cross. This is telling us that there’s more text within that document that isn’t showing because the text box is smaller that the placed document.

Step Five
We want the text to flow from the bottom of the column to the top of the next column. Click the red cross and the cursor will turn into the icon again. Navigate to the top of the page by using the scroll bars and click near the top of the page again, this time in the second column. It should look something like this.

Step Six
Repeat this process until all five columns have text in them. The text naturally flows from one column to another, so if you insert text in one column it’ll push the text to the next column. If you delete sentences or paragraphs, it moves columns back to the left. For now, the first page should look something like this.

Step Seven
If you notice, there’s indents already applied within the document. (All these documents are from Alice in Wonderland, a public domain text available to use without having to deal with copyright). We need to remove those tabbed indents, since we will apply the first line indent by applying the paragraph style. Many times, writers will submit stories with indents already applied, even though it’s preferable to not have any indents. With the Text tool, click at the beginning of each paragraph and delete the tabbed indents. All the text should be flush to the left for now.

Step Eight
Next, let’s apply the Paragraph style to the article. With the Text tool, click anywhere in the placed document. Go to Edit>Select All (Or press Option-A (PC: Alt-A) to select all the text. Open the Paragraph Styles Palette and click on “body text” style to apply it to the article. The font style, size, and justification will change.

Step Nine
We’re going to add titles, photos, captions and pull quotes later. For now, let’s place all the articles. Navigate to the second page by either using the scroll bars or double-clicking on Page 2’s icon in the Pages palette. Place “article2.doc” by going to File>Place and clicking in the left-most column again.

Step Ten
Repeat the process from step four by clicking on the red cross near the bottom of the first column and then clicking at the top of the second column. Click near the bottom of the second column and place into the third column, and repeat this until all five columns have text. It should look something like this. Note: all the text in the article may not be showing, as it may be too long for all five columns currently. That’s fine—we’ll adjust the article later. Remove the indents to the beginning of each paragraph.

Step Eleven
Go to File>Place and place “article3.doc” onto page 3, and flow the text across all columns, following the same steps 3 to 6. Repeat this process and go to File>Place and place “article4.doc” onto page 4 and flow the text into each column, using the same steps 3 to 6. Next, select all the text on page 2 by clicking in it with the Text tool and going to Edit>Select All and apply the “body text” style by clicking on it in the Paragraph Styles palette. Apply the same style to the articles on pages 3 and 4. Pages 2 and 3 should look something like this, with the style applied.

Don’t worry if the columns are a little higher or lower, we’ll fix this in the next section of the tutorial as we add other elements. Save the file as newspaperlayout.indd for use in the next part.