Are you fairly new to QuarkXPress? If so, you may be guilty of making some of the errors mentioned in this article. Have a quick read and see if there are any pitfalls that you are commonly falling into when you use QuarkXPress.
The New Project dialogue window (which appears automatically whenever a new project is created) is often completely ignored by many QuarkXPress users, even if the settings are not the right ones for the project they are about to create. The settings you see are left over from the last project created: if the new project needs different settings, go ahead and change them.
Where does the page actually end? A lot of inexperienced QuarkXPress users mistake the margin guides for the edge of the page. Margin guides should be set when creating the new project and are used to align text and image boxes. These items should be placed on the guides: there is no need to leave any extra space.
Another common error is excessive use of ruler guides. These are created by dragging either the vertical or horizontal ruler onto the page and can be used to align elements using Quark’s handy snap-to-guides features. Snapping two elements to the same guide ensures that their edges are aligned. This is a great feature when used in moderation. However, a lot of users create so many guides that it becomes difficult to see which guide relates to which element on the page. In general, guides are quicker to use but measurements are more accurate.
Incorrect use of guides is another basic error frequently encounter among QuarkXPress users. A typical scenario is where you want to create a new element and align it with something that’s already on the page. So you drag a guide onto the page and align it with the existing element. Then you create your second element and snap it to the guide. This means that only the first element is actually aligned with the guide. Remember, the snap is what makes guides useful. So dragging a guide and aligning it to the edge of a box by eye won’t do. You need to go back to the first element and ensure that it too is snapped onto the guide.
Automatic text boxes is another source of confusion for many QuarkXPress users. This option can be activated when creating a new document and allows you to use Quark in a similar way to a word processing package. Each page in the document automatically has a text box on it and once this box is filled with text, a new page is generated, also containing a text box.
A lot of inexperienced Quark users conclude that this feature just means that you don’t have to create the text box yourself, the program creates it for you. In reality, the automatic text box has a sting in its tail. When it becomes filled with text, it immediately generates a new page, also containing an automatic text box and so on. So, if you use automatic text boxes on single page layouts, you run the risk of having unwanted pages being generated if your text box becomes filled with tex (which can easily happen as you experiment with different typefaces and type sizes.
Users new to QuarkXPress will often develop a strange fascination with the text box tool and try to assign it powers that it doesn’t in fact possess! For example, they will attempt to edit text by selecting the text box tool and clicking on the text. In fact, the only thing the text box tool can do is to actually create the text box in the first place. Thereafter, the content tool should be used for entering and editing the text.
Confusion between the item and content tools is another common problem for new users. The item tool is to be used for moving elements on the page and for working with grouped elements. To edit the contents of t text or picture box, use the content tool. This confusion eventually will resolve itself for most users, since each time it arises, they will find the right tool sooner or later even if only through trial and error.
You will often see new QuarkXPress users highlighting the Item tool when resizing text or picture boxes. This is not necessary since resizing a box can be done whether the item or content tool is selected.
QuarkXPress newbies will often create more text boxes than they need to (This box is for my heading, this one is for my subheading, and so on…), forgetting that the format of text can be changed as many times as necessary within the same box. Separate text boxes need to be created only where the attributes of different blocks of text cannot be accommodated within the same box: for example, a heading spanning two columns above a two column story.
Beginners in QuarkXPress will often spend a lot of time aligning headings within a text box, for example vertically centring, forgetting that, since the box will not print, all that matters is the position of the text itself on the page. A good way of curing this one is to get into the habit of pressing F7 (a shortcut for View - Guides). This keystroke toggles the visibility of the QuarkXPress margin and ruler guides as well as the edges of boxes that have no frames. This means that you are always reminded of which elements will actually be visible when the document prints.