Some Quark keyboard shortcuts

theonemanpublisher — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 08:29:36 +0000

Now, there are an awful lot of these — some requiring considerable finger gymnastics — and really too many to remember. Here, I try to list the ones I personally use the most and also list some Quark-specific formatting that may make your life easier. The following are all based on QuarkXPress 7 for PC. (I’m a bit rusty on Macs, although many of these should still work if you substitute the Cmd button for the PC’s Ctrl button.) I haven’t included shortcuts that just exist to bring up dialog boxes (although they’re obviously useful to).

This website has a pretty comprehensive list of Quark shortcuts for PC and Mac. John Brandt has produced a PDF containing a very extensive list of shortcuts, which can be downloaded from Planet Quark‘s website [link].

Typographical shortcuts

Change font size

Increase font size through preset steps	Ctrl-Shift-.
Increase font size through 1pt steps	Ctrl-Alt-Shift-.
Decrease font size through preset steps	Ctrl-Shift-,
Decrease font size through 1pt steps	Ctrl-Alt-Shift-,

Change leading

Increase leading through 1pt steps	Ctrl-Shift-‘
Increase leading through 0.1pt steps	Ctrl-Alt-Shift-‘
Decrease leading through 1pt steps	Ctrl-Shift-;
Decrease leading through 0.1pt steps	Ctrl-Alt-Shift-;

Change kerning

Useful when you are one word over on a column and you need to lose a line. Don’t overdo it though.

Increase in 10/200-em steps	Ctrl-Shift-]
Increase in 1/200-em steps	Ctrl-Alt-Shift-]
Decrease in 10/200-em steps	Ctrl-Shift-[
Decrease in 1/200-em steps	Ctrl-Alt-Shift-[

Images

Centre image in a picture box	Ctrl-Shift-m
Fit image to box (keeping aspect ratio)	Ctrl-Alt-Shift-f

Magnifying the screen

Ctrl-0 (zero) is very useful, fitting the page to the size of the screen. If you have a wheel on your mouse, you can increase or decrease the size of the page by pressing Ctrl and turning the wheel forward and backward. Otherwise, press Ctrl-Space and draw a marquee to enlarge a specific area.

Miscellaneous

A non-breaking space can be very useful; for example, if your style sheet specifies measurements should have a space preceding them (such as 5 ml or 35 g) and you don’t want them to break at the end of a line. This is achieved by typing Ctrl-5. Similarly, a non-breaking hyphen can be inserted by using Ctrl-=.

Typographically, a slash (/) should be preceded and followed by a thin space, which you can get by pressing Ctrl-Shift-8. (It’s a bit anal, but it does look nicer.)

When you’re inserting automatic page numbers on a master page the shortcut, when you’re inside a text box, is Ctrl-3.

And you all know that you should press Shift-Enter to start a new line, as opposed to Enter, which starts a new paragraph!

keyboard shortcuts – The one-man publisher