Styles are not working 100 percent

[D_Akey@adobeforums.com]

Two parter:

1) I'm using character and paragraph styles for pretty much the first time, so I could have simply screwed up. . . but I'm not sure where.

If you apply different styles back and forth onto the same lines of copy, could it cause conflict? I mean, doesn't the last application of a style override the previous completely?

Imaging three stacked lines of copy. The problem came when I could no longer change the leading on only the last line. The preceeding lines adjusted fine and followed the new style 13 pt, but the bottom line only stayed at 16 pt leading. I couldn't even select that line and change it in the options, not by applying styles. In othr words, I couldn't get it to fix itself nohow.

I noticed that the last line is always the one that refuses to conform using different styles.

Any ideas?

2) And I'm not sure when to use character style over paragraph style, since they both seem to have similar adjustable features, like font, leading, etc.

Thanks!

[Dave_Saunders@adobeforums.com]

Paragraph styles apply to whole paragraphs. Use character styles for text highlights within a paragraph. Character styles always override a paragraph style, so if you:

1. Apply a paragraph style to a paragraph (without clearing overrides).
2. Apply a character style to the whole paragraph.
3. Apply a different paragraph style to the paragraph (without clearing overrides).

The third step will affect the look of the text only where the character style doesn't override the second paragraph style. Character styles are incremental, so, for example, one could just call for "Bold" -- if the one you applied in step 2 did that and your second paragraph style called for a different font, the paragraph would change to the bold variant of the font.

But, if the character style specifies a particular font, the font of the second paragraph style is ignored.

Paragraph Styles also affect a bunch of paragraph-level entities (like indents and spacing, paragraph rules, nested styles) that aren't part of a character style.

Dave

[D_Akey@adobeforums.com]

1. Apply a paragraph style to a paragraph (without clearing overrides).
2. Apply a character style to the whole paragraph. 3. Apply a different
paragraph style to the paragraph (without clearing overrides).




Thanks for your response, Dave!

So 'without clearing overrides' means what? How do you clear an override? By clicking on 'None' in the styles palette?

Seems to me that if you're trying stuff out to find a look in a hunt and peck sort of way, that what has been applied and what are all the attributes of each applied style, what is getting applied over the course of diddling around might be hard to remember.

I'm sure once you know this process well it wouldn't be a big deal, but meantime, I'm busy doing more than is necessary and going back and forth to make it look right, which doubtless makes for problems.

Ultimately, I would develop formulas that require no experimentation. But I'm not there yet.

So I need to know how to clear any applied styles so I can just use the right one. Is the the 'None' choice? And would I have to choose it in both Paragraph and Character styles to be absolutely sure nothing it being applied? Zeroing it out, as it were.

Thanks so much!

[Dave_Saunders@adobeforums.com]

Check the drop-down menu on the Paragraph Styles palette.

There's also a button at the bottom that will clear overrides.

Overrides are local formatting or character styles. You can clear them when applying a style as follows:

To clear local formatting, hold down Option when you click on the style name.

To clear local formatting and character styles, hold down Option+Shift.

If you're converting from XPress, bear in mind that InDesign's character styles are incremental and are sparsely defined. This is much more flexible but it takes some getting used to.

Dave

[D_Akey@adobeforums.com]

Thanks again. This helped a lot.

I found the buttons.

Always makes me crazy going the self-taught route.

This forum has saved me more than a few times.