Styles

Creating character and paragraph styles, applying them to text, and changing them in one place. Open the style lists with the Character styles and Paragraph styles buttons in the editor's top bar.

What a style is

A style is a named bundle of formatting — font, size, color, alignment and so on. Once text uses a style, editing the style's definition changes that text everywhere in the document at once.

• Character style — character-level formatting (font, size, color, tracking …)
• Paragraph style — paragraph-level formatting (alignment, leading, indents, tabs, lists, kinsoku …). It holds no character formatting of its own; instead it applies the Character style you assign to the paragraph's text.

Every document has a Basic style, which cannot be edited or deleted.

Related questions

• What is the difference between character and paragraph styles?
• Why use styles?

Opening the style list

Click the Character styles or Paragraph styles button in the top bar. In the list dialog:

• Add — create a new style. The style settings dialog opens.
• Select a style and click Edit — change its definition. The whole document updates.
• Select a style and click Delete — remove the style. Text that used it keeps its formatting; only the link is reset to None. If you delete a style that other styles are based on, the formatting it passed down is merged into those styles, so they look the same as before.

Adding, editing and deleting styles can be undone with ⌘/Ctrl+Z.

Related questions

• Where do I create a style?
• Does deleting a style remove the formatting from my text?

Style settings dialog

Opens when you add or edit a style.

• General — Style name, Based on (the style this one inherits from), for paragraph styles the Next style (the style the next paragraph gets when you press Enter in this one) and a Character style (applied to the paragraph's text together with the paragraph style), for character styles the Language, a Shortcut, Reset to base style (drops this style's own settings so it matches its based-on style), and a Style Settings summary of how it differs from its based-on style.
• Character style sections: Font, Color, Tracking & Scale
• Paragraph style sections: Alignment & Spacing, Indents, Tabs, Lists, Drop Cap, Background & Border, Kinsoku, Line Breaks & Hyphenation, Justification
• Each item means the same as the character and paragraph attributes in the "Text" article, except that Align under Alignment & Spacing has no Align toward spine or Align away from spine — apply those to paragraphs directly in the Attributes tab. Leading is a multiple of the font size.

Besides Text color and Background, Color has a text outline, the same as the Stroke setting of an InDesign character style. Set Text color to None to leave the letters unfilled so only the outline shows (picking a color again brings the fill back). Pick a color under Stroke or click None, and enter the thickness in points under Stroke weight (1 pt by default). Join is the shape of the corners where the stroke turns (Miter, Round, Bevel); with a miter join, Miter sets the limit at which sharp corners are cut off (4x by default). Align is either Center (the default, straddling the glyph edges) or Outside (outside the edges only, drawn under the fill so it never covers the letterforms). The outline looks the same on screen and in PDFs. When the color is None, the weight, join, alignment and miter settings are not used. Turn on Draw stroke first to draw the outline before (under) the fill, so the fill covers the inner half of the outline and the letterforms stay legible even with a heavy outline (outside alignment is always under the fill, so the option is unavailable then). The outline color and weight can also be changed in the Character section of the Attributes tab.

Justification works like InDesign's Justification. Word Spacing, Letter Spacing and Glyph Scaling each take a Minimum, Desired and Maximum in percent (defaults 80/100/133, 0/0/0 and 100/100/100). Desired values apply to every line, whatever the alignment. A justified line spreads its extra or missing width over word spacing → letter spacing → glyph scaling within the minimum–maximum range, and anything left over widens word spacing beyond the maximum. When a line is filled, spacing may tighten to the minimum to fit one more word. Letter Spacing is a percentage of the space width. Lines without spaces (such as Korean broken by character) follow Single Word Justification: Full Justify spreads the letters, while left, center or right alignment leaves them unstretched on that side. Auto Leading shows the Leading from Alignment & Spacing as a percentage — it is the same value. Composer defaults to the Paragraph Composer, as in InDesign: it looks at the whole paragraph and breaks where the spacing is most even across lines, sometimes changing an earlier line to avoid a very loose one later — so editing text can reflow earlier lines of the same paragraph. The Single-line Composer fills one line at a time and breaks where it overflows. Frames with text wrap, lines containing tabs and lines next to a drop cap are always broken one line at a time.

Mojikumi under Kinsoku works like InDesign's Mojikumi (built-in sets). It removes or keeps the blank half of full-width brackets and punctuation for each pair of character classes. Line-End Punctuation Half-Width keeps punctuation full-width but sets consecutive punctuation (such as 」「) and line-end punctuation half-width; Punctuation Full-Width keeps line-end punctuation full-width too; Punctuation Half-Width sets all brackets and punctuation half-width. All three put 1/4 em between CJK (Han, kana and Hangul) and Latin characters and let justification tighten punctuation down to half-width (before word spacing). When a paragraph with mojikumi is stretched to justify, the JIS rules (JIS X 4051) set the order — Latin word spaces, then the space between CJK (Han, kana, Hangul) and Latin characters, and any remaining width is spread evenly only between CJK characters; the space around brackets and punctuation and inside Latin words is not widened. Paragraphs whose mojikumi is None (the default in Korean documents) put the remaining width into word spaces. The default, Follow document language, means Line-End Punctuation Half-Width in Japanese and Chinese documents and None otherwise. You can make your own sets from Mojikumi Settings… in the select (InDesign's Mojikumi Settings). Copy the set you are viewing with New Set, then pick a cell in the table — the character before (row; the top row, Line start, is the first character of a line) and after (column) — and enter Minimum, Desired and Maximum as a % of the em. Negative values remove the blank half of full-width punctuation (-50% = half-width), positive values add space, and justification squeezes or stretches within that range. Turning off Adjust spacing leaves that pair untouched. Trim at line end trims the blank part of a closing bracket, comma, period or middle dot at the end of a line so the glyph meets the right margin. Built-in sets are read-only. Custom sets are saved in the document; if you delete one, paragraphs that used it are composed as Follow document language. Sets you keep in your account under the web's document work settings › Mojikumi are copied into new documents.

A paragraph style's Character style is applied only to text that has no character style of its own. A different character style you applied to a range stays as it is. If you change the paragraph style's character style or set it to None, only the text that got it from the paragraph style follows.

To set a shortcut, click Assign in the Shortcut row and press the key combination you want. A key pressed without a modifier (⌘/Ctrl, Alt, Shift) is not accepted. If another style already uses the combination, you are told. Esc clears it.

Related questions

• I want a keyboard shortcut for a style
• What is "next style"?
• I want to put an outline (stroke) on text
• Can a paragraph style carry a character style?

Tab settings

Set tab stops in the Tabs section of the paragraph style settings dialog. It works like InDesign's Tabs panel. Pressing Tab in text moves to the next tab stop.

• Click the strip above the ruler to add a tab. Drag a tab marker to move it; drag it up or down off the strip, or select it and press Delete (Backspace), to delete it. Alt(Option)-click a tab to cycle its alignment.
• Four alignment buttons: Left-Justified Tab, Center-Justified Tab, Right-Justified Tab, Align to Decimal Tab. With a tab selected, a button changes that tab; otherwise it sets the alignment for new tabs.
• X — the selected tab's position (pt). Typing a value with no tab selected creates a new tab there.
• Leader — characters that fill the tab space (up to 8), such as the dots (.) in a table of contents. Leaders line up vertically across lines.
• Align On — the character an Align to Decimal Tab aligns on (period by default). If it is missing, the text aligns like a right tab.
• Menu (≡): Clear All, Delete Tab, Repeat Tab (repeats the gap between the selected tab and the previous one to the end of the ruler), Reset Indents.
• On the ruler, ▼ is the first-line indent and ▲ the left indent. Drag them to change.

To set tabs for the current paragraphs without a style, open Tabs… while editing text — from the right-click menu or the button in the Paragraph section of the Attributes tab. The same tab ruler appears right above the frame (or table cell) being edited, with 0 at the frame's inner left edge and the screen zoom as its scale. Changes go straight to the selected paragraphs (or the paragraph with the caret) and can be undone with ⌘/Ctrl+Z. This panel also lets you drag the right indent (◀). On a paragraph with a style applied, the change shows as a style override.

Positions are measured from the inner left edge of the text frame (not from the indent). Where there are no tabs, default tabs occur every 36 pt (0.5 in), and the left indent acts as a tab stop for a tab typed to its left — this is how hanging-indent lists (1.⇥text) line up. In justified paragraphs only the text after the last tab is spread. Leaders appear the same in PDF.

Related questions

• How do I right-align page numbers with dot leaders like a table of contents?
• How do I line numbers up on the decimal point?
• How do I change the tab spacing?
• How do I delete a tab?
• I want tabs on just this paragraph, without a style

Applying a style

1. While editing text, put the cursor in the characters or paragraph to format, or select a range.
2. In the Attributes tab, open the Style dropdown at the top of the Character section (character styles) or at the top of the Paragraph section (paragraph styles) and choose a style.
3. A style with a shortcut is applied instantly by pressing that combination while editing.

The Style row appears only while you are editing text. To apply a style to all the text in a frame, select it all with ⌘/Ctrl+A while editing, then choose the style.

The three buttons on the same row:

• New style from current selection — saves the current text's formatting as a new style.
• Redefine from current selection — applies to the whole document — overwrites the selected style's definition with the current formatting.
• Style settings — edit this style's definition (applies to the whole document) — opens the style settings dialog.

Double-click the dropdown to rename the selected style.

If you change the text after applying a style, the dropdown shows the style name with a '+' after it (for example 'Body+') to mark the override. Choose the same style again to return to the style's formatting.

Related questions

• How do I apply a style?
• I want to save the current formatting as a style
• I edited a style but my text didn't change

Removing a style

Set the Style dropdown in the Character or Paragraph section of the Attributes tab to None. The formatting stays; only the link to the style is removed.

Related questions

• I want to unlink a style from my text

Using styles in other documents (Register · Load)

Two buttons at the top of the style list dialog work with your account's style library.

• Select a style and click Register — uploads the style to your account style library. Formatting inherited from its based-on style is included, so it looks the same in other documents. If a paragraph style uses a character style, that character style is uploaded too. A library style with the same name is updated.
• Load — opens the list of styles in the library. Check one or more and click OK to add them to this document's style list. If a chosen paragraph style uses a character style the document does not have, that character style comes along too. If the document already has a style with the same name, choose Add renamed (for example 'Heading 2') or Overwrite (replaces the document style's definition; text using that style changes too).

You can see the library on the web portal under Document Settings › Paragraph Styles / Character Styles. Styles checked there are included in every new document from the start. Library styles are also deleted on that tab.

Related questions

• I want to use my styles in another document
• How do I get the same styles in every new document?
• Where do I delete a registered style?