Adobe InDesign CS2

Creating Styles

A style is a definition of the type, indents, color, or other settings for specified characters or paragraphs in your document.

Styles are helpful for documents that have several formatting changes (e.g., titles, section headings, text, lists) and for projects that more than one person is working on. Styles can make documents more consistent and save you time (especially if you decide to make global changes to your document).

As with most programs, planning ahead can save you a lot of time when creating and modifying your styles. Creating and using styles allows you to format text with a single click rather than setting each formatting change individually for each block of text. This document explains the basics of creating styles in your InDesign document.

Creating a Character Style
Creating a Paragraph Style

Creating a Character Style

You have several options when creating a style. You can define a new style based on an already existing style, or from already formatted text. Character styles should be applied to one or more words. (e.g., words you want to emphasize or vocabulary words)

Creating Character Styles: From Formatted Text

Using the Type Tool, select text which has attributes you want to include in your style
If the Character Styles palette is not already displayed, from the Type menu, select Character Styles
The Character Styles palette appears.
NOTE: The palette is displayed if a checkmark appears next to its name in the Type menu.
In the Character Styles palette, click MENU» select New Character Style...
The New Character Style dialog box appears.
In the Style Name text box, type a name for your new style
Click OK
The new character style appears in the Character Styles palette.

Creating Character Styles: Dialog Box Option

If the Character Styles palette is not already displayed, from the Type menu, select Character Styles
The Character Styles palette appears.
NOTE: The palette is displayed if a checkmark appears next to its name in the Type menu.
In the Character Styles palette, click MENU» select New Character Style...
The New Character Style dialog box appears.
In the Style Name text box, type a name for your new style
OPTIONAL: To define a new style based on an already existing one, from the Based On pull-down list, select the desired existing style
HINT: If you want to change only a few things, you can make the desired changes and save the modified style under a new name.

Define the style by making the appropriate changes using the following categories of attributes or options:

Category	Option
General	Used to define the style's name, keyboard shortcut, and the style it is based upon.
Basic Character Formats	Used to define font, size, kerning, case, leading, tracking, and position.
Advanced Character Formats	Used to define horizontal and vertical scale, baseline shift, skew, and language.
Character Color	Used to specify color, tint, and weight.
OpenType Features	Used to customize tilting, swash, ordinals, fractions, and figure style.
Underline Options	Used to define the offset, weight, type, color, and gap color.
Strikethrough Options	Used to change the offset, weight, type, color, and gap color.

When finished, click OK
The style appears in the Character Styles palette.

Creating a Paragraph Style

Paragraph styles use both paragraph and character formatting to apply to one or more paragraphs. You can create paragraph styles either from an existing paragraph style or from an already formatted paragraph.

Creating a Paragraph Style: From Formatted Text

Using the Type Tool, click within a paragraph with the formatting you want to use for a style
If the Paragraph Styles palette is not already displayed, from the Type menu, select Paragraph Styles
The Paragraph Styles palette appears.
NOTE: The palette is displayed if a checkmark appears next to its name in the Type menu.
In the Paragraph Styles palette, click MENU select » New Paragraph Style...
The New Paragraph Style dialog box appears.
In the Style Name text box, type a name for your new style
Click OK

Creating a Paragraph Style: Dialog Box Option

If the Paragraph Styles palette is not already displayed, from the Type menu, select Paragraph Styles
The Paragraph Styles palette appears.
NOTE: The palette is displayed if a checkmark appears next to its name in the Type menu.
In the Paragraph Styles palette, click MENU» Select New Paragraph Style...
The New Paragraph Style dialog box appears.
In the Style Name text box, type a name for your new style
OPTIONAL: To define a new style based on an already existing one, from the Based On pull-down list, select the desired existing style
HINT: If you only want to change a few things, you can make the desired changes and save the modified style under a new name.
OPTIONAL: To select a style for the paragraph following the newly created paragraph style, from the Next Style pull-down list, make the desired selection

Define the style by making changes to the categories of attributes or options
NOTE: Please also refer to those options affecting Character Styles.

Category	Option
Indents and Spacing	Used to define the alignment, line spacing, and indents.
Tabs	Used to set tab position(s).
Paragraph Rules	Used to apply the paragraph's style to the preceding and following paragraph and customize basic options for these paragraphs.
Keep Options	Used to ensure that text remains together, eliminating words or single lines of text that become separated from the other lines in a paragraph.
Hyphenation	Used to specify the length words should reach before they become hyphenated, and other options.
Justification	Used to set word spacing, letter spacing, glyph scaling, and the default value.
Drop Caps and Nested Styles	Used to create a drop-cap character style and nest the character style in a paragraph style.
Bullets and Numbering	Used to set bullet and numbering options.

When finished, click OK
The style appears in the Character Styles palette.