Paragraph Styles in InDesign CS2

By Claire Blinman

InDesign enables you to create and modify paragraph styles. A paragraph style differs from a character style because it includes not only the text characteristics, but also the spacing, indentation and other paragraph attributes. InDesign provides a Paragraph Styles palette to make working with paragraph styles easy.

Each InDesign document contains a default paragraph style. You may modify the default style, but you may not rename or delete it. You may create new styles, which you can edit, rename or delete.

To create a new paragraph style, open the Paragraph Styles palette and select New Paragraph Style. Type in a new name for your paragraph style. You may base the paragraph style on an existing style by identifying the base style in the pulldown menu.

You may also define the style of the following paragraph by specifying the paragraph style InDesign should use once you press return. This is helpful to ensure that all headline text is followed by standard body text or by sub-heading text. Likewise, you may decide that a new paragraphs should follow the same style as the paragraph that precedes it. This ensures that your style remains uniform as you are typing body text.

You may add a shortcut key to your new paragraph style by selecting the Shortcut text box, pressing the Num Lock key to turn on the keypad numbers lock, and typing a key combination consisting of Shift, Alt or Ctrl and a number from the keypad. Letters and non-keypad numbers cannot be used to define a shortcut.

Specify any other attributes you would like to apply to the paragraph style and click OK.

To delete a paragraph style, open the Paragraph Styles palette and select the name of the style you would like to delete. Right-click the style and choose Delete from the contextual menu. You may also choose Delete style from the palette menu, or you may activate the Delete icon - a trash can - in the palette menu and drag the style to be removed to the Delete icon.

You may want to check Quark to Indesign here.