Hi there!
In this tutorial, we’ll be talking about ‘paragraph styles’. However, before discussing
paragraph styles, it’s imperative to know what styles mean, as far as InDesign is concerned.
Let me grab the text tool, and type in Adobe InDesign. At this point, the font is Minion
Pro, and the font size is 12 points. I did not set the font, or the size. As I typed
in, these were the default options. Let’s change the font to Arial Black. Let’s underline
the text, and also, change the text color, to red. What I just did is, added some styles
to the text. Paragraph styles are nothing, but a collection of rules, that defines the
way your text behaves, and looks. They contain formatting for both the characters,
and the paragraphs.
Why do we need them? Well, they can save you time, simplify your work, and help keep
your formatting more consistent and professional. Let’s delete this text box. Let’s go to
window, and then styles, and select ‘paragraph styles.’ Let’s make a text box, and then
right-click, and fill some placeholder text. I’m going to divide this text into a heading,
a sub-heading, and some paragraphs. There are two ways you can add paragraph styles
to your text. In the first way, you can style your text first, and then add it to a paragraph
style, so let’s highlight the heading, and change the font to Roboto Black. Let’s also
change the font size to 18 points. Click the underline option from the toolbar above, and
change the font color to blue. Next, highlight the sub-heading, and change the font to Roboto
Medium, font size to 14 points, and font color to pink. Finally, highlight the rest of the
text, and change the font to Roboto Regular. Alright, we’ve added styles to our text,
but we haven’t assigned them to paragraph styles yet, so let’s select the heading,
and click the small plus button at the bottom of the paragraph styles panel, to create a
new paragraph style. Select the new paragraph style, and double-click the blank area, just
left to the style name. Let’s rename the style ‘heading’. Under the style settings,
you should be able to see what styles we’ve applied to this paragraph style, so just hit
okay. Time to select the sub-heading, and then click
the plus button to create another style. Double-click and rename it ‘sub-heading’, and hit okay.
Finally, select the rest of the text, and click the plus button, and double-click the
style, and rename it ‘text’. This is one of the ways, we can create paragraph
styles, for our text. To test it, let’s create another text box, and fill it with
placeholder text. You see, because in the paragraph styles panel, the heading style
was selected already, which is why, this text appears so. Let’s click the basic paragraph
style from the styles panel, and the text shall revert to the default settings. Let’s
create a heading, a sub-heading and some paragraphs, much like earlier. Click anywhere on the heading,
you don’t necessarily have to select the entire heading, and then click the heading
paragraph style, and the style shall be applied to the text. Similarly, click anywhere on
sub-heading, and click the sub-heading style and it shall be applied. Lastly, with the
text, when you click the first paragraph, and then apply the style, it will be applied
only to the first paragraph, so you’ll have to select the entire text, and then click
the text style, and it shall be applied. Let’s delete these text boxes, and also
the styles we’ve created. Make a fresh text box, and right-click to fill it with placeholder
text. Much like earlier, divide the text into a heading, sub-heading, and some paragraphs.
The second way to apply paragraph styles is to first create the paragraph styles, and
then apply them to your text. Remember! At this point we don’t have our text selected.
Let’s begin creating some styles, so click the small plus button to create a new style,
and then double-click the style, and rename it ‘heading’. You can see in the style
settings, that it’s set to default, except the font, because it picked the last font
used. There are way too many settings, that you can find on the left, that can be applied
to our text. Let’s go to basic character formats tab, and change the font style to
bold. Update the font size to 24 points, and check the underline box. Since we did not
select our text before coming to the paragraph style options, whether we check the preview
button or not, does not really matter. Go through other tabs, to see what settings you
can play with. Like I mentioned, you can completely change the look of your text from the styles
option, but for now, hit okay. Click anywhere on the heading, and then click the heading
style, and it shall be applied. This time, let’s click once on the sub-heading
to place our cursor, and then create a new style. Double-click, and rename this style
‘sub-heading’. Check the preview box this time, and now whatever settings you’ll change
here, will instantly get reflected onto the text. Let’s go to ‘basic character formats’
tab. Update the font style to ‘medium’. Change the font size to 18 points. You see
how the settings are being applied instantly, to our text. Let’s go to ‘character color’
tab, and click the pink color, and hit okay. Similarly, let’s quickly create a text style,
and change the font size to 14 points, and apply it to the text. Since our cursor was
sitting on the first paragraph, when we applied the text style, only that paragraph took effect
of the style, so let’s apply it to the second paragraph as well.
Suppose you don’t like the pink color on your sub-heading, and would like to change
it from the color option on top, so let’s change it to blue. Now we have overridden
the style, that we applied to the sub-heading, something that is permissible, but in a situation,
where you have a lot of text, and you have overridden several styles, that you might
have applied earlier, how would you know, which ones are overridden, and which ones
are style-driven? Well! You see this icon with an [a+] sign on it, It’s a style override
highlighter. Click it once, and InDesign will highlight all the instances of the overridden
text in your document. Another nice feature is redefining the style.
Let’s select these words, and change the font to Silom. For some reason, I really like
this font, and would like my text style, to be changed to this font, so I don’t have
to go to the text style, and make changes there. With the text selected, all I need
to do is, click the burger menu, and select ‘redefine style’, and my entire text style
shall be redefined, according to this new style. Let’s undo the last operation, using
Command Z on a Mac, or Ctrl Z on a PC. Let’s make another text box on the right, and fill
it with some placeholder text. Apply the basic paragraph style to it, and make a heading
out of this text. Now suppose I want all the styles of my heading on the left, plus I want
to change the color as well, so the best way to do this is to create a new style, double-click,
and name it ‘heading 2’, and in the ‘based on’ option, select heading, so what it does
is, it applies the style of the heading style that we created earlier, and now on top of
that, you can add whatever styles you want, so we’re going to go to ‘character color’
tab, and change the color to ‘green’, and hit okay.
Lastly, let’s randomly select some text, from the text box on the left, and change
its font color to pink. Now when I click the style override highlighter, it clearly tells
me that I have two instances, where I’ve overridden the styles. To clear the overrides,
no matter how many instances you have, all you need to do is, click this small button
on the left of the plus button, and it shall revert the text to the originally applied
styles. Let’s click the sub-heading once, and then clear the overrides here as well.
Alright guys, that concludes our session, and I’m sure by now you’re comfortable
with paragraph styles, because we’ll be discussing the character styles next, so see
you in a bit.