Using Type > Using paragraph styles > Creating and editing paragraph styles

 

Creating and editing paragraph styles

When you create a new paragraph style, the style's settings are based on the parent style (the style that is currently selected in the Styles panel). You use the Edit Style dialog box to enter new settings for the style. You can also edit an existing style. You can rename a new style or an existing style.

When creating or editing a style, you can set specified attributes to No Selection or the equivalent, to preserve those attributes with no change in the original text when you apply the style. For example, to create a style that does not change the font of the text it is applied to, you can select No Selection for the font specification.

To create a style:

1

In the Styles panel, select the Normal Text style from the scroll list, or select another text style that you want to use as the parent for the new style.

2

Click the triangle in the upper right corner of the panel to display the Options pop-up menu, and choose New.

A new text style is added to the scroll list. New text styles are named Style-1, Style-2, and so on. To choose specifications for the style, see the procedure that follows for editing a style. To change the name of a new style, see the procedure below for renaming a style.

To edit a style:

1

In the Styles panel, select the style in the scroll list.

2

Click the triangle in the upper right corner of the panel to display the Options pop-up menu, and choose Edit.

3

In the Edit Style dialog box, select options for text and paragraph attributes. For information on selecting options, see Setting precise type specifications, Setting tabs, indents, and margins, and Applying text effects.

4

To change settings globally, choose one of the following from the Global Settings pop-up menu:

Choose No Settings to clear all settings.

Choose Restore Original Values to revert any settings you changed in step 4 to their original values.

Choose Restore Program Defaults to change all settings to the default FreeHand text settings (the settings for Normal Text).

5

Click OK.

To preserve settings for specified attributes when applying a style:

1

In the Styles panel, select the style in the scroll list.

2

Click the triangle in the upper right corner of the panel to display the Options pop-up menu, and choose Edit.

3

In the Edit Style dialog box, do any of the following:

To preserve Font, Style, Leading, Text Effects, or Rules settings, choose No Selection from the respective pop-up menu.

Note: Choosing None in the Rules pop-up menu removes all paragraph rules in paragraphs to which the style is applied. Choosing No Effect in the Text Effect menu removes all text effects.

To preserve Justification, select the Blank button in the button bar.

To preserve color, deselect the Style Affects Text Color option.

To preserve hanging punctuation, select Hang Punctuation until a dimmed check mark (Windows) or hyphen (-) (Macintosh) appears. (An empty checkbox indicates that hanging punctuation is turned off.)

To preserve size and spacing settings (Point Size, Paragraph Spacing, Spacing %, Range Kerning, Baseline Shift, and Horizontal Scale), clear the respective text boxes.

To preserve Tabs and Margins, select No Selection in the text ruler.

To rename a style:

In the Styles panel, double-click the style name in the scroll list and enter the new name.

Note: You cannot rename Normal Text, the default text style.