Text styles can be applied to text within your publication 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.
Text styles can be applied to text using the Text Styles, Paragraph or Character panels, the context toolbar or a custom keyboard shortcut.
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 publications 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 click. When working with paragraphs, you can adopt paragraph styles using the same principles as character styles.
To apply a text style to a paragraph:
With the Artistic Text Tool or Frame Text Tool selected, click inside a paragraph or drag to select multiple paragraphs.
Do one of the following:
On the context toolbar, select a text style from the Paragraph Style pop-up menu.
On the Paragraph panel, select a text style from the Paragraph Style pop-up menu.
On the Text Style panel, select a paragraph text style.
Use a custom keyboard shortcut.
To apply a text style to a sentence, word or character:
With the Artistic Text Tool or Frame Text Tool selected, select a portion of text.
Do one of the following:
On the context toolbar, select a text style from the Character Style pop-up menu.
On the Character panel, select a text style from the Character Style pop-up menu.
On the Text Style panel, select a character text style.
Use a custom keyboard shortcut.
To remove local formatting:
With the Artistic Text Tool or Frame Text Tool selected, select a portion of text with local formatting.
On the Text Style panel, select Reset Formatting.
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 behaviour of local and character formatting, i.e whether it is removed or kept.
To control local/character formatting override behaviour:
Select the paragraph.
On the Text Styles panel, -click on a chosen style's Options menu and select the behaviour 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.
To apply a text style to a paragraph:
To apply a text style to a sentence, word or character:
To remove local formatting:
To control local/character formatting override behaviour: