: I want to number sentences in InDesign (like Bible verses) That is, like: 1 ssdfsf sfsfdsf. 2 sfdsffd safdsdff asgg. 3 asdfdsfsag ... and so forth. Not lines, not paragraphs, not list items,

@LarsenBagley460

There's a cheeky way you can do this which allows you to insert consistently styled, auto-updating numbers while you type, by abusing InDesign's "Footnotes" feature.

Note that InDesign only supports one series of footnotes, so this prevents you from using regular footnotes - however, you can still have actual footnotes in your document using cross-references (in fact, I usually prefer cross-references for footnotes than the footnotes feature anyway since they offer more flexibility in where the note goes, and can be used in more contexts such as inside tables).


First, you'll want to use Edit > Keyboard shortcuts... to create a keyboard shortcut for Type > Insert footnote, since you'll need to get into the habit of using it before each sentence. As discussed in the comments, whatever option you use for this you'll need to manually insert some kind of special marker to discriminate between, for example, .s used for sentences and .s used for awkward cases like abbreviations that happen to be followed by a capital letter or number, ellipses which may or may not end sentences, sentences inside quotations... There are plenty of possible awkward cases which will require human judgement.
Then you'll want to configure Type > Document footnote options to style and format your paragraph numbers appropriately, so it looks like sentence numbers, and so the "notes" themselves are hidden. Here's a crude example:







Then just type. From here on, it'll instantly put in the correctly numbered, correctly styled sentence number each time you use that keyboard shortcut, and it'll instantly update automatically update all the numbers any time you move or delete one. As always when using one of Adobe's automation options, save often, they do sometimes crash.


(for the "invisible" paragraph style, I use leading: 0, font-size: 0.1, color: paper - there might be a better way)

Advantages of this:


You've got complete control over where every sentence number is placed, so you can handle exceptions and awkward cases like abbreviations, ellipses and sentences within quotations however you choose case-by-case
The numbering updates live, instantly, if you add, delete or move sentences
You can update both the character style and the text format of all numbers at once instantly (e.g. roman numerals, letters, 01 02 03 etc etc as well as any suffixes and prefixes)
It applies live, instantly, as you type, rather than something like a script or action you apply when you've finished


Disadvantages:


You'll need to get into the habit of doing the keyboard shortcut when typing sentences - but I think you'll need some sort of manually applied sentence marker however you do it, and one press of a keyboard shortcut which instantly creates the correctly styled number is much easier than, say, selecting some text and applying a character style, or adding an invisible character which you might accidentally miss or apply twice.

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