Base a Paragraph Style on a Character Style
Colin wrote:
I’ve created several character styles, but now I want them to be paragraph styles instead. Is it possible to do a conversion or do I have to build new paragraph styles? Or… is possible to create paragraph styles based on character styles?
I wish we could base paragraph styles on character styles, but alas, you cannot… at least, not directly. And you cannot really convert a character style into a paragraph style. But there are two tricks you should know about that will help you.
First, you can create a new paragraph style based on a character style by placing the text cursor in some text tagged with the character style when you make your paragraph style. That is:
- Apply the character style to some text.
- Place the cursor in that text.
- Create a new paragraph style in the Paragraph Styles panel. All the character formatting of that character style will be “sucked up” into the paragraph style you’re making.
After you apply the paragraph styles throughout your document, you can delete the character style from the Character Styles panel. When it asks you what to use instead of that character style, just tell it “None.”
Using Nested Styles
You can also fake a “based on” relationship between a paragraph style and a character style with nested styles.
- Create a new paragraph style.
- In the Nested Styles pane of the New Paragraph Styles dialog box, click New Nested Style.
- Choose your character style from the pop-up menu in the nested style field.
- Click on the word “Words” to activate that field.
- Type some character that you’re sure doesn’t appear in any of your text, such as ¶ or ?.
- Click OK to save the paragraph style, then apply it to some text.
Because the character you typed in step 5 doesn’t appear in the paragraph, the character style is assigned throughout the entire paragraph, overriding any character formatting defined in the paragraph style. If you later edit the character style definition, it’s updated in the paragraph style, too.
Of course, this won’t really work if you’re using nested styles in a paragraph already, but for many people it’s just the ticket for basing paragraph styles on a character style.
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Thanks for the quick reply, David. However, I think you meant the heading up there to read “Base a Paragraph Style on a Character Style”! Thanx again.
Thanks, Colin! Sigh. Typed too quickly. Fixed now.
I’m working right now with someone else’s template (using all character styles for some mad reason), and option one as described wouldn’t work. Here’s what I ended up doing:
1. Apply the character style to some text.
2. Select that text.
3. In the character style panel select “Break Link to Style”
4. Create a new paragraph style in the Paragraph Styles panel.
Then it worked like a charm.
Hey there David,
how about applying 2 separate character styles on top of each other? Does that work? Like a style for a heavier weight, and another for Small Caps (specially set to ALL CAPS but @ 70% of actual font size). It seems everytime I do it (IND CS3), it’s either one of the other. And please don’t tell me I have to craft separate styles of different combos… *cry*
Sure, you can apply a second character style on top of the first! For example, the nested style could apply a specific font and size to the whole paragraph (as described in the post above), and then you could still apply an “all caps” character style on top of that.
However, you cannot manually apply two different character styles to some text. InDesign only remembers one character style applied to text.
Thanks for the interesting article. :) I was also looking to learn more about nesting styles and now I got a few pointers lol.
really nice article
I have just tried to make paragraph styles as you wrote – well done! All is ok
thx u!
Kudos to “Five,” this also worked for me! It was an absolute life saver!!! :)
Hi I’m from Denmark and I do not understand what “nested style” means what does it do???
@Henriksen: The nested styles feature lets you apply different character formatting to different parts of a paragraph (such as “style 1 up to the 3rd word, then style 2 up to the 2nd sentence, etc.)
Good post, thanks for sharing.
I have created paragraph styles numerous times in different documents — and every once in a while (like now!!) I cannot get the paragraph style to apply —
I am dragging in files from Word (via bridge) to InDesign CS4 document — and when i select the frames and select the paragraph style – nothing happens! I’ve created a new para style and tried and still nothing…
Any ideas why??
Thanks!
PS: yet if i highlight the text and select the paragraph style, it does convert….
@Colleen: Not sure what the problem could be… sometimes that happens if there is a character style applied to all the text.
Am I remembering all the way back to Quark when we -COULD- change a character style and have it flow through styled paragraphs? Or was this a feature in (pre-XML?) earlier InDesign versions?