Long Hours of Design

GREP: Add Periods to End of Paragraph

GREP: Add Periods to End of Paragraph

Find What: ((?<!.)(w|[!?)])(?!.)$)|((?<!.)( )$)

Change to: $1.

What: This GREP query finds paragraphs which don’t end in a period. The “Change to” adds a period at the end of the paragraph.

Why: Often, I get text from a Word document with missing periods. It’s rare that these occur MID paragraphs; they are often left off before line breaks.

Or, fragments (like bullet points or cell contents) get turned into full sentances, and periods need to be added.

I wouldn’t recommend running this query as a “change all” on your whole document, but run it one to the next.

Doing this by hand isn’t always all that tedious, but using the “Find / Change” panel, especially for discontinuous paragraphs, is substantially faster.

How:

1. “Negative Look-behind” — “This text only when is is NOT preceded by…”

1A. A period. ^{[ 1 ]}’

Sometimes you have a whitespace character after a period. So we ignore those.

2. Any word character

2A. - or -

2B. Either ! or ? or )

The paragraph is either going to end with a letter (a “word character”) an exclamation mark, a question mark, or a close parens. So we’re searching for one of those.

3A. “Negative Look-Ahead” — “ONLY if this is NOT followed by…”

3B. A period

We don’t want to find characters followed by a period — those don’t need to be fixed. So we find ones without.

4. Search for this at the END of a paragraph

OR ( | )

5. “Negative Look-behind” — “This text only when is is NOT preceded by…”

5A. A period.

Sometimes we find the end of a paragaph, with a hanging whitespace and no period. So, we want to search for this. It’s easier to look for it as an “or” statement. In addiiton, when we place a period in, we don’t want to keep that extra space. Doing it this way allows us to do that.

6. A space

7. Search for this at the END of a paragraph

• The Basics of Production — #1

All designers need to work with a contract. Without one, you’re a high-wire act without a net.

In earthquake country.

On a windy day.

But perhaps even more fundamental than that are the basic agreement that make up your project.

Today, let’s talk about specifications.

Specifications

“Specification” is defined as “the act of describing or identifying something precisely or of stating a precise requirement.”

It almost goes without saying that if you don’t precisely identify what you’ll be designing, it’ll be mighty hard to design it.

Now, as stupid as it sounds, the lesson to learn here is that specifications are about specifics.

Learning from My Stupidity

Now, this doesn’t mean that requirements can’t change, or that a project may evolve into something else — but before you start a project, you’ve got to nail down exactly what you’re building.

A direct-mail house recently requested a postcard from me. They didn’t know the exact size, but they knew their client would want something big—6x9, they thought.

So, I went ahead and started with a 6x9.

I didn’t nail down the exact size; I didn’t double check to see if he was certain; and I sure didn’t require that he get me a final size before I start any work on the project. I had worked with his printer before—I didn’t even look over the old card I had done to check the size.

We worked the card, I submitted proofs, and everything had traveled up the line to the semi-approval phase (that’s a technical term.)

Only then did I actually check with the client.

Turns out, it wasn’t a 6 x 9, it was a 5 x 8.

We All Make Stupid Mistakes

Now, a change of one inch less may not seem like a big deal, but trust me—after you’ve designed a piece all the way through, changing the size to any degree is a pain.

Like a falling-out-of-a-plane-without-a-parachute type pain.

Of course, this was an rank-amateur mistake.

But it pointed up some valuable things about specifications.

‘Da Specifications of ‘da Specifications

Now, the list of things which you could specify is as long and varied as the number of print projects you could ever possibly put your hands on.

But there are some basic items that you’ll always need to know:

1. Size

• How big is the piece?
  
• What are it’s bleed dimensions, if any?
  
• What’s a safe area for trim?
  

2. Colors

• Full Color?
  
• Black and White?
  
• Duo- Tri- or Quadra-Tone
  
• Any PMS or Trumatch colors?
  

3. Copy/Content

• Just what the heck is supposed to BE in this piece, anyway?

The Lesson

The lesson here, though perhaps it seems like an obvious one, is: know before you go. Get the specs!