An old script gets a refresh
The purpose of InDesign’s Balance Ragged Lines feature is often misunderstood. The feature is intended to be used to break short (2–3 line) paragraphs early to achieve an even rag. This would best be done by a human being who understands the context of the paragraphs, and how they should flow, but the Balance Ragged Lines feature can be extremely valuable for large projects such as directories where you don’t have the time to break each paragraph by hand.
The Balance Ragged Lines feature makes this automatic. The problem is, the feature tends to favor making the first line longer, and the second line shorter, resulting in a “Vee shape”. But this script lets you change this behavior. Be sure to read the documentation that accompanies the script for a full explanation.
I updated the script today to make it work with all language versions of InDesign. I hope you find the script useful!
