JavaScripting InDesign

In response to a request, I've updated the Smart Title Case script I posted last August (and wrote about here). The new version is now available in the Featured Scripts Downloads section.

I've made two changes, one trivial and one significant. The significant change is that the script now adds an initial cap to the first word after a forward slash, so, instead of having:

absolutely/positively

convert to:

Absolutely/positively

it now converts to:

Absolutely/Positively

The lesser change is a clean-up of the built-in list of words to ignore. I had "is" in there. To my eye, capitalizing "is" in title case text looks wrong, but because it is a verb, it apparently ought to be capitalized according to the style guides I have read. My reaction to this is to avoid using "is" in a title, but I don't always have control over the contents of titles in the documents for which I do the composition.

Usage Note

This script includes two word lists you can edit to customize it to your own use. Or, you can use an external word list in a text file for each of the two lists.

If you don't use the script very often, it is easy to confuse yourself by creating an external word list and then forgetting that you did this. I've done it myself and found myself trying to debug a non-existent problem because the script was apparently ignoring my changes to the word lists -- it wasn't ignoring my change: it was ignoring the whole list.

I suggest if you do decide to add an external list you should edit the corresponding list in the script to say so. For example, change the ignoreWords line to read:

var ignoreWords = ["using external file"]

Then, when you come back to the script a month or so later and want to add another word to the list, the script itself will remind you what you did.