Adobe InDesign CS2

Working with Styles

Styles are an excellent way to easily format text and paragraphs within your document. Using styles allows you to format with a single click, rather than individually changing each element of your text. For more information about creating your own styles, please see Creating Styles. This document discusses the application of styles that you have already created to your document.

Applying a Style
Editing a Style
Deleting a Style

Applying Styles

Applying Paragraph Styles

Applied styles will affect the text from paragraph return to paragraph return. To apply a style to one complete paragraph, you need to place your insertion point within the paragraph. To apply a style to multiple paragraphs at once, you must select at least one character from each paragraph.

If necessary, to display the Paragraph Styles palette, from the Type menu, select Paragraph Styles
The Paragraph Styles palette appears.
Place the insertion point within or select the paragraph(s) you want to apply the style to
In the Paragraph Styles palette, click the desired style name

Applying Character Styles

If necessary, to display the Character Styles palette, from the Type menu, select Character Styles
The Character Styles palette appears.
Place the insertion point within or select the character(s) you want to apply the style to
In the Character Styles palette, click the desired style name

Editing a Style

You may decide later that the specifications originally set for a style are not what you want. You can edit the style so that the change you make occurs for every instance of that style in your document.

Deselect any text or paragraphs before editing styles
In the Character Styles or Paragraph Styles palette, select the style to be changed
Click MENU » Select Style Options...
The Character Style Options or the Paragraph Style Options dialog box appears.
Make the desired changes
For more information on options, refer to Creating a Character Style or Creating a Paragraph Style.
When finished, click OK

Deleting a Style

If you no longer want a style, it can easily be deleted. Once a style is deleted, all text that relied on that style for formatting retains the formatting of the style. Subsequent changes, however, will have to be made to each paragraph or character individually.

In the Character Styles or Paragraph Styles palette, select the style to be deleted
In the lower-right corner of the palette, click DELETE SELECTED STYLES
A confirmation dialog box appears.
Select the style you would like to apply to all text that currently uses the style being deleted
To delete the style, click YES
To keep the style, click NO