Copywriters: whether you’re in-house, small agency or even a temp gig-hopper, chances are you’re working alongside designers who use Quark Express. So there will definitely come a time when you’re required to open up a Quark document and make changes to the text. If you’re smart, you’ll realize that the more comfortable you are in Quark, the less of a chance you’ll have of peeving your coworkers by destroying what’s already there.
Quark Express is a phenomenal program that you can FLY AROUND in, provided you know what you’re doing. The tools are there, all it takes is a little practice. Wouldn’t it be great to know you’ve got the edge over the typical non-Quark copywriter? Following are seven Quark Express tricks that are guaranteed to have you breezing through those copy changes in record time.
1. Zoom In, Zoom Out.
Why You Need It: headline creation. Most likely, your job requires you to "pop in" several headlines and subheads on a single-page, tabloid-sized ad. A good copywriter knows that her headline themes shall not repeat each other, so if you’re able to zoom in, type the text, zoom out again and view the entire page, you’ll be primed for a speedy eagle-eye headline review.
How to Do It:
Zoom in: Start with a view of the whole page. With your cursor on the Move Tool (looks like a big asterisk), hold the right mouse button down and drag it downward on the diagonal. This is how you "marquee" around a section of text you want to look at up-close. What you’re doing here is simply creating a viewing window.
Zoom out: (Command-zero) Put your right thumb on the COMMAND (or open apple) key and your index finger on the (0) zero. (Not to be confused with the letter O, which if you hit that would open another document.)
Put these two together: Command-zero for a panoramic page view, marquis around on specific area. Command-zero, marquis. Do it again. Do it one more time. Are you getting the hang of the zoom in, zoom out? It’s pretty handy to know.
2. Clicking Through Stacked Layers.
Why You Need It: most copywriters know the sinking feeling of trying to click a text box in Quark and being unable to "get at" the text. What’s going on here? There’s probably another, transparent text box covering the text box. Here’s what to do.
How to Do It:
Put your left three fingers on SHIFT, ALT and COMMAND (again, COMMAND is the apple key) and hold down. While depressing these keys, use the right hand to click the text box you’re trying to get at. Repeat clicking until you see those little "grabber corners" appear on the box you want to change. What the "chord" does here is allow you to click down through the layers and get to the text box to make your edits. Be sure that you click the Text (T) tool before typing your changes. When you’re done, just click away and move on to the next task.
3. Moving Around the Page Without Scrolling.
Why You Need It: Sure you can scroll, but who wants to wait for the page view to catch up with a redraw? An easier method for "scooting" around in your Quark document follows.
How to Do It:
Click the Move tool and then "zoom out" for a view of the entire document. (See Tip 1 if you don’t know how to do this.) With your left hand, press the COMMAND key and keep it engaged. You’ll notice that the cursor has changed to a little "hand-grabber." Drag the mouse in any direction, and the page moves with you. Pretty cool, eh?
4. Duplicate Text Box.
Why You Need It: You may want to type a new headline into a designed group of text boxes, but you’re afraid to mess up the design. So rather than destroy what the poor artist took hours to create, you can "duplicate" their text box to get the exact text specs you need to work with. You can then drag your duped text box onto the pasteboard and let them know you’ve placed the new headline there.
How to Do It:
Just click any text box, and press COMMAND-D. The text box will multiply by one, and you will see an identical text box right next to it.
Note: if you want to get fancy, double-click the new text box, change the background color to something flashy like yellow, and then hit F5 to "bring it to the front." Then place your new headline on top of the old one. Be sure to tell the designer you did this just in case he objects or has a better solution. If it turns out he loves your method, use the Duplicate trick in Tip 4 to dupe your new "headline text box," cover your next headline with the new box and type in the next headline.
5. Group and Ungroup.
Why You Need It: Quark designers often use "double" text boxes stacked one on top of the other to create shadowed headlines. The top text box contains text in one color, and the box beneath it contains text in another. The bottom text box is shifted just a skoche. When viewed together, this looks like text with a shadow! You will find the trouble happens when you try to change the headline - why can’t you get at the box underneath!?
The reason is because the boxes have been grouped together. You can see two or more grouped boxes because they’ll be framed with a dotted line. When you grab for one box, they all move together.
How to Do It:
Try this: Click the Text tool. Create a text box and type in short headline using one of the thicker fonts. Now make sure you’ve clicked the box and then use COMMAND-D to duplicate it. You now have two identical headlines. Select one of these, and highlight the text, then change the color to white. Go back to the first text box and position that one so it almost totally covers the white text (but leave a little shadow room). If you can’t get the darker-colored box to sit on top of the white, click the darker box, and hit the F5 key. This will "bring to front." When both boxes are positioned the way you like them, group them as follows:
Put your left index finger on the SHIFT KEY. With the right hand, click the headline. You will see that one of the two boxes will show "grabber" tabs. While keeping shift held down the entire time, click again and this time BOTH boxes will be designated. With the left, do a COMMAND-G. Now your two text boxes are grouped together! You can move them wherever you’d like. To UNGROUP, simply do a COMMAND-U.
6. Show Invisibles.
Why You Need It: Invisibles are a copywriter’s best friend. If you turn yours on, you can see every single space and every carriage return vs. soft return. So if there’s an extra accidental space or unintended hard return, you’ll be able to see it and fix it easily!
Note: Carriage returns and soft returns affect your text leading. If you want to set the leading for one paragraph of text, place a hard carriage return at the end of the first line of text and at end of the last line where you’d like to retain the leading. Any other forced returns within that paragraph should be "soft returns" (press SHIFT and RETURN together).
How to Do It:
To Show Invisibles, simply do a COMMAND-I. To shut off invisibles, do a COMMAND-I again. Easy enough!
7. Shrink or Enlarge Text Proportionately.
Why You Need It: In Quark, you can specify each aspect of your text design including size, font, color and leading for every letter or line. Once you’re happy with the proportional arrangement of your text within one box, you may decide the proportion is a-okay but the size is all wrong! To make every single item in that text box larger or smaller, use the below technique.
How to Do It:
Put your left hand in "chord" placement again. (Press the COMMAND-ALT-SHIFT keys together and keep them held down). With the Text tool highlighted, grab the corner of the text box and either pull out or in, depending on if you want to scale the item bigger or smaller. Notice how everything in the box gets larger or smaller yet retains the same proportions! Now that’s a handy trick.
These are just a few of many more Quark tricks designed to make your life easier. Instead of getting horrified looks from your coworkers, wouldn’t it be great to hear excited murmurs of "The copywriter knows Quark!" from the design team? Of course it would. So start practicing and with any luck you’ll be a Quark Master by next week!
Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved.
Dina Giolitto is a copywriting consultant and ghostwriter with 10 years of experience writing corporate print materials and web content. Trust her with your next e-book, article series or web project, and make a lasting impression on your audience of information-hungry prospects. Visit http://www.wordfeeder.com for more details.
