Teach Yourself QuarkXPress : Version 4 (Teach Yourself) - Softcover

Written primarily for beginners, the book follows a slow-paced and intuitive route from creating a new document, working with pages, adding and formatting text, and then on to more complex steps like linking text boxes, adding page numbers, and working with books--all this before even introducing graphic items and images. Such a firm grounding in handling text and typography is important to getting the most out of a premier layout application like Xpress.

Users with some experience in XPress can use the book as a review or for discovering new shortcuts. There may be features you've never conquered, for example, making an index or table of contents, or the intricacies of master pages, all of which are succinctly explained here. There's a convenient appendix with keystrokes for special characters such as the ligature of f and l, which also lists special characters specifically for the Find/Change dialog box and eight different kinds of word spaces.

The writing is clear and uncluttered; it's a bare-bones manual style that can be just the ticket when you just have one question and need the answer fast. There's not much here for intermediate or advanced users. For example, although there is a nice explanation of how to use clipping paths, the subject of setting trapping preferences is only discussed briefly. On the other hand, if the book were much more in depth, you wouldn't be able to read it while hanging from that subway strap. --Angelynn Grant

Topics covered: Elementary instruction in using Quark XPress, including creating documents, working with pages and master pages, working with text boxes and formatting text, working with items and images, using colors, manipulating text to improve readability and appearance, creating books with tables of contents and indexes, and preparing files for printing.