Alongside paragraph styles, InDesign also includes character styles. These do a similar job but are generally used in slightly different circumstances. Let’s look at what they both do and how to use them.
Getting Started With InDesign Paragraph Styles
Begin by opening the Paragraph Styles window. If it’s not already open, press F11 or select Window > Styles > Paragraph Styles. You may find this also opens the Character Styles window. That’s fine—you’re going to need it as well.
Place the window wherever you want in InDesign. You can dock it on the left or right, but we’re going to keep it floating for now.
By default, you will already have the [Basic Paragraph] style. This is the style that gets applied to new text until you define something else.
You can change this, but you can’t delete or rename it. If you double-click on it, you’ll open the Paragraph Styles Options panel.
Here, you can see just how many formatting attributes can be stored in a paragraph style. You can define styles this way, but it’s quicker to use your existing text as a base for styles.
Creating an InDesign Paragraph Style
Let’s start with a basic two-page document, consisting of two headlines, two standfirsts, five subheads, and paragraphs of placeholder text. At this point, everything is in the default [Basic Paragraph] style.
Style your first headline however you want. In our case, we’ve chosen Arial Black at 30pt. The font color is the default black.
Place your type tool anywhere inside the headline text. In the Paragraph Styles window, click the Plus button at the bottom. This will create Paragraph Style 1. Note that you can also select and edit text using the InDesign Story Editor.
You should give this a more memorable name. Left-click on the name of the paragraph style, wait about half a second, and left-click again.
This should enable you to edit the name of the paragraph style. You can also rename it in the Paragraph Style Options window, which you open by double-clicking the paragraph style name.
We’ve named our new paragraph style Headlines because that’s where we’re going to be using it.
Now, navigate to Main Headline Number 2 on the second page. Put your type cursor anywhere inside the headline, and select the Headlines paragraph style you just defined.
This headline now has all the same formatting as the first one.
Apply the same principle to your standfirsts, but try adding a different color this time. We’ve opted for red. InDesign will store this information in the paragraph style as well.
Now move on to the subheads. This time, we’re going to change not only the font and color, but also the space between the letters (tracking). We’re also going to increase the line spacing (leading), so there’s always a gap above our subheads.
The screenshot below shows that our font is Arial Bold at 12pt with 23pt Leading, and the Tracking set to 20. It’s also set to Blue.
You can now apply this style across the rest of your document. It’s easy to see how this can save you time when you want to format similar parts of your document.
Using InDesign Paragraph Styles on Whole Paragraphs
So far, we’ve only applied paragraph styles to single-line headers. Next, we need to create styles for our paragraphs. Before we do that, we’re going to align all our body text, including the subheads, to the document’s baseline grid.
Select all of your text. Now, either open the Paragraph window (Windows > Type & Tables > Paragraph or Ctrl + Alt + T), or find the Paragraph section of the Properties window.
Near the bottom of that window are two buttons: Do not align to baseline grid and Align to baseline grid. Click the second one, and all of the text will be aligned to the document’s baseline grid.
You can adjust this, but that’s a lesson for another time. As a result of this change, we won’t have lines of text that don’t align with each other.
Right now, we need to tweak our Subheads style, because the increase we made to the leading is no longer big enough. Increasing the Leading to 30 fixes this.
Altering our first subhead causes our Subheads paragraph style to change to Subheads+, which indicates this text has diverged from its paragraph style. Click the Clear Overrides button at the bottom of the Paragraph Styles window to revert to the defined style.
Now double-click the Subheads Paragraph Style to open its Paragraph Style Options. Click Basic Character Formats, set the Leading to 30, and click Ok. All of your subheads will now be formatted the same way.
You can use everything you’ve learned so far to create a Body Text paragraphs style. Ours is Minion Pro in Black at 9pt. The Tracking is at 0, the Leading is set to 12pt, and it has a 5mm indent on the first line of the paragraph.
Place the type cursor in the text you want to apply the style to, and then click the Body Text paragraph style. If it spans several paragraphs, click and drag to select them all. Don’t select your subheads.
This is how our document looks so far.
We don’t want the indent on our opening paragraphs, though, or in the paragraphs below our subheads. We can create a new style, Body Text No Indent, to fix this.
You can do this by right-clicking on the Body Text style and then selecting Duplicate Style. Or, you can make the change to one paragraph, and then click the Plus icon in the Paragraph Styles window. Apply this wherever you want.
In Paragraph Style Options, you can also create dependencies by basing styles on other styles.
Save Time With InDesign’s Next Style Option
InDesign can automatically assign paragraph styles with just a few clicks. To demonstrate, we’ve deleted all but our first paragraph of body text, using our Body Text No Indent paragraph style.
In the Paragraph Style Options panel for that style, click Next Style. Select Body Text from the dropdown menu, and click Ok.
Now, whenever you press Enter while using the Body Text No Indent style, the next line will automatically use the Body Text paragraph style.
You can do the same thing with the text that follows your subheads. This time, select Body Text No Indent from the Next Style menu.
Now, whenever you write a subhead using the Subheads paragraph style, pressing Enter will automatically apply Body Text No Indent to the next line. Press Enter again, and it will apply the Body Text paragraph style.
Using InDesign Character Styles
Sometimes, you only want to apply formatting to a small part of your text, without affecting the rest of the paragraph. This is where character styles are useful.
As an example, we want to highlight certain words using a different color, bolding, and italics. Select a word or character you want to highlight, and change its formatting to whatever you want. We’ve chosen Minion Pro Bold Italic, and we’ve changed the color to Pink.
Next, with that character or word selected, click the Plus button in the Character Styles window, and rename your new style. Ours is called “Pink Highlight”.
You can now apply this character style just as you did with the paragraph styles. Notice that it doesn’t affect the underlying paragraph style. The indents, for example, stay as they are.
Most of the time, you should use paragraph styles to save formatting information. On the other hand, you should use character styles more sparingly.
The Basics of InDesign Paragraph and Character Styles
InDesign is an extraordinarily rich piece of software. What we’ve covered here is the fundamentals of paragraph styles—enough for you to complete most projects.
Paragraph styles and character styles are just one way that InDesign can save you time. It’s worth exploring the Paragraph Style Options panel a bit more to see just how much you can do. We haven’t covered the Character Style Options panel, but it works in pretty much the same way.
Image Credit: Free-Photos/Pixabay
