Learn how to create and work with Paragraph and Character Styles.
Work with Character and Paragraph styles [also called Text styles] to maintain consistency throughout your document.
Text styles help you save time and effort while you work on large documents. Read on to learn how to
create, edit, load, and delete paragraph and character styles in InDesign. You can manage
style overrides.
Use Character and Paragraph styles to save time and ensure consistent formatting throughout your artwork.
You can also select Style Override Highlighter, Quick Apply, Clear Overrides in Selection, Create New Style Group, and View Style packs from the Paragraph Styles panel.
New to InDesign? Use Style Packs to save time and effort. Style Packs are the content-aware built-in set of paragraph styles. For more information, learn how to work with Style Packs in InDesign.
You can change the format of the default or new Character, Paragraph style anytime. Follow these steps to edit and apply a style to selected text or set the style for new text:
The following options are common for both character and paragraph styles. Add or adjust the following options to create a new style or modify an existing one:
Change the Character Color, Tint, Weight, Miter Limit, and Stroke Alignment. You can also check Overprint Fill or Overprint Stroke. | |
Check Tilting Alternates, Contextual Alternates, Swash Alternates, Ordinals, Discretionary Ligatures, Fractions, and Slashed Zero. You can also select Figure Style, Positional Form, and Stylistic Sets. | |
Check Underline On to add Weight, Type, Offset, Color, Tint, Gap Color, and Gap Tint. You can also check the option to Overprint Stroke and Overprint Gap. | |
Check Strikethrough On to add Weight, Type, Offset, Color, Tint, Gap Color, and Gap Tint. You can also check the option to Overprint Stroke and Overprint Gap. | |
Select Tag, add Class, and check Include Classes in HTML, and Emit CSS. You can also see the Export Details of the selected character style. |
Here are the additional options available for Paragraph Styles. Add or adjust the following to create a new Paragraph style or edit an existing one:
Paragraph Border | Check Border to add the following options:
You can also check Display Border if Paragraph Splits Across Frames/Columns, and Merge Consecutive Borders and Shading with same Settings. |
Paragraph Shading | Check Shading to add Color and Tint along with the following:
You can also check Overprint, Clip To Frame, and Do not Print or Export. |
Keep Options | Check the Keep with Previous, and add Keep with Next [number of] lines. Check Keep Lines Together to select either of the following options:
You can also select Start Paragraph options from Anywhere, In Next Column, In Next Frame, On Next Page, On Next Odd Page, On Next Even Page. |
Hyphenation | Check Hyphenate to add Words with at Least, After First, Before Last, Hyphen Limit, and Hyphenation Zone. Select the slider between Better Spacing and Fewer Hyphens. You can also check Hyphenate Capitalized Words, Hyphenate last Words, and Hyphenate Across Column. |
Justification | Adjust settings for Word, Letter and Glyph Spacing, Auto Leading, and Single Word Justification. |
Span Columns | Select the Paragraph Layout from Single Column, Span Columns, and Split Column. You can further customize them with the following options:
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Drop Caps and Nested Styles | Add or update the following options:
You can also check Align Left Edge and Scale for Descenders. |
GREP Style | Add New GREP Style or Delete an existing one. |
Bullets and Numbering | Select the List Type from None, Bullets, or Numbers, and customize them further:
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Paragraph style options may vary based on the localized version of InDesign.
If you have a preferred text format in another InDesign or InCopy file, you can follow these steps to load styles into your current InDesign file:
If you have some favorite styles in a Word document, you can easily map Word Styles to InDesign Styles.
Don't need a particular style? You can follow these steps to easily delete Character, paragraph styles:
When you delete styles, the appearance of paragraphs tagged with the style doesn’t change, but their formatting is no longer associated with a style.
You can create, edit, and delete styles in stand-alone Adobe InCopy documents or in InCopy content that is linked to an Adobe InDesign document. When the contents are updated in InDesign, new styles are added to the InDesign document, but any style modifications made in InCopy is overridden by the InDesign style. For linked content, it is best to manage your styles in InDesign.
An override is any change made to an existing style. If there are any overrides to a Character, Paragraph style, you can see a plus sign next to the style name.
Do you want to know the areas where the overrides are in place? Select the Style Override Highlighter in the character or paragraph styles panel.