How to Apply Optical Margin Alignment in Adobe InDesign

Optical Margin Alignment creates hanging indents on letters like A, V, W, Y, and punctuation, so that the beginnings of lines in a text frame appear flush. It is one of the finer points of typography aesthetics. The following four steps show how to apply Optical Margin Alignment.

1. Notice how the lines of text in the examples of the quoted paragraphs appear ragged on the left, as if the text was out of alignment. This is because of the white space built into the character mapping of the font.
2. To create a more pleasing left alignment, choose the text frame with either the Selection Tool or Type Tool, then go to the Type menu and choose Story.
3. In the Story Panel, check Optical Margin Alignment.
4. The alignment can then be fine-tuned further by adjusting the point size in the Story Panel until the desired effect is achieved.