Using text styles

Text styles can be applied to text within your designs for efficiency and consistency.

About text styles

A text style is a set of one or more text attributes which can be applied to text in bulk. An attribute could be a typeface, trait (bold, italic), font size, spacing, alignment to name only a few. Later, if you chose to modify a text style, any text which uses that style will update to conform to the attribute changes you've made.

Every new document comes with a default set of text styles but the Text panel provides you with the ability to create and manage a document's text styles as well as remove them.

Understanding local formatting vs character and paragraph style formatting

Local formatting means that you apply a text attribute(s) directly to a character, word or paragraph. These settings are not stored so if you want to do the same to other text you'd have to do it all again. This is fine for smaller passages of text but for longer passages of text this might be laborious and also create inconsistency. Character formatting overcomes this by saving those attributes to a named character style that can be applied to any text just with one tap. When working with paragraphs, you can adopt paragraph styles using the same principles as character styles.

Character text style Paragraph text style Text panel To apply a text style to a paragraph:
  1. Do one of the following, with either text tool selected:
    • Drag to select multiple paragraphs.
    • Tap inside a paragraph.
  2. Do one of the following:
    • On the context toolbar, select a character style from the Character Style pop-up menu.
    • On the context toolbar, select a paragraph style from the Paragraph Style pop-up menu.
    • On the Text panel, select a text style from the Text Style pop-up menu.
Character text style To apply a text style to a sentence, word or character:
  1. With either text tool selected, select a portion of text.
  2. Do one of the following:
    • On the context toolbar, select a text style from the Character Style pop-up menu.
    • On the Text panel, select a character style from the Text Style pop-up menu.
Reapply Styles To remove local formatting:
  1. With either text tool selected, select a portion of text with local formatting.
  2. On the Text panel, select Expand next to the Text Styles menu, then tap Reapply Styles and select Reapply Text Styles from the menu.

Controlling local and character style overrides

If you have a mix of local and character formatting on a paragraph, and you apply a different paragraph style to that paragraph you can control the override behavior of local and character formatting, i.e. whether it is removed or kept.

Options menu To control local/character formatting override behavior:
  1. Select the paragraph.
  2. On the Text panel, select Expand next to the Text Styles menu, then tap the style's Options menu and select the behavior you want.
    • Apply <style> to Paragraphs—The style is applied; character styles are kept but local formatting (bold,italic, etc.) is removed; paragraph indents and alignment settings are overridden.
    • Apply <style> to Paragraphs and Clear Character Styles—The style is applied but local formatting (bold,italic, etc.) and character styles are removed.
    • Apply <style> to Paragraphs and Preserve Character Formatting—The style is applied and local formatting (bold,italic, etc.) and character styles are kept; paragraph indents and alignment settings are overridden.
    • Apply <style> to Paragraphs and Preserve Local Formatting—The style is applied and local formatting (bold,italic, etc.) and character styles are kept; paragraph indents and alignment settings are kept.

Two additional Apply <style> to Characters options let you apply a chosen paragraph style as a character style to selected text—either removing or retaining any local formatting on selected text.

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