The short list of what you should understand about InDesign: pdf

• Characters

attributes, tracking, kerning

• Paragraphs

leading, alignment, orphan & widows
(bad line breaks),
indents (first, left, right, hanging),
and baselines
story > optical margin alignment
aligning to the baseline and changing pref’s
columns: span & splits

• Space Before & After

• Rules

text or indent

• Tabs

left, right, center, decimal,
fill characters

• Tables

• Styles (store info. first then apply)

paragraph
character
object
local formatting
plus symbol
redefining

• Master Pages

multiple page documents,
spreads, multiple masters,
page tool
page numbering (command 2,3,4)

• Threading

linking & unlinking
with and without existing containers
viewing

• Glyphs

• Special characters

em and en dashes
ellipsis vs 3 periods
indent to here

• White Space

• Break characters

• Placeholder text

• Hidden Characters

• Objects

Text wrap
    ignoring the text wrap
Container/frame shapes
Converting contents — text, graphic, none
Text frame options

• Shapes

Clipping paths
Pen tool
Special effects
Fitting
Pathfinder
Alignments
Step and repeat

• For Both (objects & text)

place
control panel
x & y coordinates
guides and grids
margins & columns
crop marks
preferences: picas, points, inches, etc.
bleeds
libraries

• Content collector

• Find and change

• Viewing options

preview modes
workspaces

• Color

coloring grayscale tiff’s
spot vs process color
Pantone vs cmyk
deleting unused colors

• PDF’s

creating
interactive : folio builder, liquid layouts, alternate layouts

• Printing

• Preflight and Packaging