InCopy includes a vertical depth ruler for copyfitting text in Galley and Story views, as well as horizontal and vertical rulers in Layout view for measuring layouts. By default, rulers begin measuring from the upper-left corner of a page or spread. You can change this by moving the zero point.

You can work with several standard measurement units, change these settings at any time, and temporarily override the current measurement units as you enter a value. Changing the measurement units doesn’t move guides, grids, and objects, so when ruler tick marks change, they might not line up with objects aligned to the old tick marks.

Rulers

A.

Labeled tick marks

B.

Major tick marks

C.

Minor tick marks

You can set up different measurement systems for horizontal and vertical rulers. For example, many newspapers measure horizontal layouts in picas and vertical text stories in inches. The system you select for the horizontal ruler governs tabs, margins, indents, and other measurements. Each spread has its own vertical ruler; however, all vertical rulers use the same settings you specify in the Units & Increments section of the Preferences dialog box.

The default unit of measure for the rulers is picas (a pica equals 12 points). You can change the ruler units and control where the major tick marks appear on a ruler. For example, if you change the ruler unit for the vertical ruler to 12 points, a major ruler increment appears every 12 points (if such a display is possible in the current magnification). The tick mark labels include your customized major tick marks, so when the ruler reads 3 in the same example, it marks the third instance of the 12‑point increment, or 36 points.

Vertical ruler using inches (left), and custom 12‑point increments (right)

Setting custom ruler increments in the vertical ruler is useful for lining up a ruler’s major tick marks with a baseline grid.

 

  Use grids