How to create a cut-in heading

[ben_7319]

Hi there. I’m curious how to create what the Chicago manual of style refers to as a “cut-in heading”. It’s seen a lot in 18th and 19th century non-fiction books.

The 1948 Chicago Manual of Style defines it thus: “A cut-in head[ing] is a head[ing] placed in a box of whitespace cut into the side of a type page. It is usually set in different type from the text and, as a rule, is placed under the first two lines of a paragraph.”

I hope that decription is sufficient. If not, it’s basically a short little description of what the paragraph, or the following multiple paragraphs are about. It’s usually very brief, perhaps only a few words or a sentence, and it’s cut into the paragraph but surrounded by whitespace, to where the paragraph “wraps” around it. And it’s usually flush with either the left or right margin.

I searched the forum and wasn’t able to find anything, and when I typed in the title of this post, none of the suggestions work either.

I was able ot make one using what’s called a Text Box under Insert >> Text Box. And then if you right click on the text box, you can click Wrap >> Optimal, which seems to produce the desired effect. And you can also click Align Objects, and align the text box to the paragraph.

This does create the desired result, but in the LibreOffice user manual, it seems to suggest a Text Box is more of a field for a form rather than what I’m using it for. I do have the user manual downloaded, and there’s dozens of occurances of either “Text Box” or “text box”.

Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks so much!

[ajlittoz]

Can you attach a picture of such a cut-in heading? Is it the same as an inline or run-in heading? If so, there are now tools to do that in “recent” releases (which is yours? Give full identification like 25.2.6.2). Otherwise the procedure is a little more complex.

@ben_7319

I was able ot make one using what’s called a Text Box
…
but in the LibreOffice user manual, it seems to suggest a Text Box is more of a field for a form rather

Text boxes are graphical objects totally alien to your text flow. They are mainly intended for “decoration”. Whatever you put inside is considered external to text flow and will never be taken into account. In particular, don’t enter headings there if you want them to be considered as headings (for document outline, cross-references, TOC, …). Thus the hint about the use in forms is approximately exact.

As mentioned above, the best you can do is to provide photographic examples of what you want to achieve. And for future implementation advice, mention your OS, LO version and intended save format. The tricks I can describe will only be valid and stable for .odt documents.

[ben_7319]

Thanks so much for your reply. I will be sure to include that info for any future posts. My OS is Arch Linux, LibreOffice version 25.2.5.2. I can update to a newer version if necessary.

I have attached two screenshots. One is where the heading is in the margins, and the other is a “proper” cut-in heading. Either one would be okay. I’m not finding anything in the user manual about either, though. Perhaps one (or both) are called “marginalia”?

I’m using .odt format, but will export to PDF eventually.

I’ll have to reply again with the other screenshot. It will only let me upload one form of media per reply.

[ben_7319]

Here is the other form that would also be fine, which is a heading found in the margins and not “cut” into the paragraph itself.

[ajlittoz]

In the first case, when the “heading” is limited to one line, it is roughly equivalent to a run-in heading, save for the extra vertical spacing, and can be easily managed with the current run-in heading feature.

The other cases (multi-line heading or heading in margin) require the use of frames. The solution then depends on whether you want this heading in a TOC or not. If this heading is not captured in a TOC, it is “simply” a marginal note and can be implemented quite “easily”.

But, if the heading should go into a TOC, special care must be observed so that reading order (or page order) is kept in the TOC. Frames are independent sub-documents; there are scanned in unspecified order (apparently related to editing history) which can distort how headings are entered into the TOC. This case is handled in a contorted way with standard headings made invisible (so that they appear at the right logical place but are not seen by the reader) and a cross-reference in a frame.

Tell me your goal and I’ll describe an ad-hoc procedure.

[ben_7319]

I really appreciate your help. You sound pretty knowledgeable. Based on what you said, I was able to find in the Writer Guide 25.2, page 85 and following, Rearranging headings and text using the Navigator. I’m experimenting with it, but not sure if that’s it. Let’s go with your first suggestion, just using a run-in heading. If for whatever reason that doesn’t work, I found what you mentioned (frames) in Ch. 6 - Formatting pages: Advanced, which has the section on frames and should be sufficient if that’s the route I decide to go.

[ajlittoz]

@ben_7319

Rearranging headings and text using the Navigator.

This will not solve your problem. It allows to switch full chapters (and their dependencies) and reorder them. It does not allow to insert inline headings (this must be done specifically) and even less cut-in headings.

I assume you need not your cut-in “headings” in the TOC. Therefore, from Writer point of view, they are not headings. You merely insert margin notes (instead of footnotes). This is the simplest case but requires some knowledge about frames. And above all, to resist to temptation to adjust size or position with the mouse (which will mess up the layout without recovery possibility).

Is this so?

[ben_7319]

Okay, so based on your info, the Frames feature is exactly what I was looking for. I have the section opened in Writer Guide 25.2, and I’ve managed to create exactly what I need. I’m going to mark this as “solved”, if that’s okay.

[ajlittoz]

Wait! I’ll write a detailed procedure and provide an example file.

[ben_7319]

That’s very kind of you!

[ajlittoz]

In the attached example document, I propose two solutions:

• a “true” paragraph heading positioned at the very beginning of a paragraph, sent in the outer margin (right side on right pages, left side on left pages)
• something conceptually akin to a margin note, positioned at the same vertical location as the anchor, inset inside paragraph

This requires definition of two frame styles.

For the margin heading, I create a new Outside Note. Its properties are:

• in Type tab:
  • Anchor To paragraph (because it is attached to a paragraph, irrespective of its contents)
  • Size Width 1.5cm (adjust to your needs, but don’t exceed margin width and allow for some spacing to edge and text), Height AutoSize (so that the frame expands automatically to accommodate text)
  • tick Mirror on even pages
  • Position Horizontal Center to Outer page border, Vertical Top to Paragraph text area
  • tick Keep inside text boundaries (to avoid bleeding of the frame into bottom margin if paragraph starts too low in the page – the frame is automatically flushed on next page)
• in Wrap tab:
  • Parallel mode (or Optimal)
  • untick Options Allow overlap
  • Spacing: I chose 0.2cm, 0.2cm, 0.1cm, 0.1cm (LRTB respectively) to optimise position viz. the settings in the note paragraph style

For the margin “note”, I customise built-in Marginalia. The properties are:

• in Type tab:
  • Anchor To character (because a “note” is attached to a more targeted word inside the paragraph)
  • Size Width 1.5cm (adjust to your needs, don’t over estimate the width for nice looking result), Height AutoSize (so that the frame expands automatically to accommodate text)
  • Position Horizontal Left to Paragraph text area, Vertical Center to Character
  • tick Keep inside text boundaries (to avoid bleeding of the frame into bottom margin if paragraph starts too low in the page – the frame is automatically flushed on next page)
• in Wrap tab:
  • After mode (because the frame is laid at left)
  • untick Options Allow overlap (to allow automatic resolution of conflicts if you have several notes in the same vicinity
  • Spacing: I chose 0cm, 0.2cm, 0.21cm, 0cm (LRTB respectively) after several trials to reach an acceptable look in “all” contexts
• I also added a background colour so that it is clear which style is applied

I created a companion paragraph style Margin Note to format text inside the frame:

• font size reduced to 9pt
• hyphentaion enabled in Text Flow tab (because the frame is rather narrow and this usually requires hyphenation for aesthetic reasons)

You now have all the tools. When you want to insert a margin heading or a cut-in note at some text location:

1. Insert>Frame
2. immediately (meaning: without resizing it, moving it or doing anything with the mouse or any tool), apply Outer Note or Marginalia frame style
3. the frame is still selected, type your note

In case you want to tune position, size or any frame attribute, do this exclusively through the style. Frame styles are extremely sensitive to direct formatting and it is next to impossible to remove it once it is set. In some circumstances, the changes may not be applied immediately to the frames (this frequently happens when you modify a style when a frame is selected – so, for safety, make sure no frame is selected before changing the style). In this case, apply another style, e.g. Formula to the reluctant frame, then back the intended style. However, this may change the character anchor position. So try to avoid the situation.

Example document: AskLOMarginNotes.odt (52.5 KB)

In this document, you can see the effect of Keep within text boundaries. I attached a cut-in note to word “Vestibulum” on the last line of the first page. Since there is not enough room to lay out the frame above the bottom margin, the frame is sent to next page.

To experiment with frame side alternation, put the cursor at start of “Aliquam velit” (last paragraph in first page), type lorem then F3 to add more text. Frame “Learning in Florence” should now be in page 3 and moved from left to right margin.