Working with Nested Styles

Often, you'll want to apply character formatting in a consistent manner to many paragraphs. For example, you may want to change the font for the first character in a bulleted list so that the correct symbol appears for the bullet. Or you might want to italicize the numerals in a numbered list. Or you might want to have the first four words of body text that appears after a headline be boldfaced and in small caps. Or you might want the first sentence in instructional paragraphs to be in italics. InDesign lets you automate such formatting via the Nested Styles feature.

New Feature ‚  

The Nested Styles feature is new to InDesign CS.

Figure 20-5 shows an example of nested styles in use, along with the Drop Cap & Nested Styles dialog box in which you create them. Here, the first sentence of the introductory paragraph's text is set in italics.

Figure 20-5: The use of a nested style is to have the first sentence in the introductory paragraph be set in italics.

Here's how the dialog box works:

1. Define any character styles that you'll apply to text via a nested style.

   Even if all you're doing is making text italic, you need to define a character style to do so. The nested Styles feature cannot apply any attributes other than those in a character style.

2. Go to the Paragraph Styles dialog box (Window ‚ Type & Tables ‚ Paragraph Styles, or F11) and select Drop Caps & Nested Styles.

3. Click the New Nested Style button.

   An entry will appear under the Nested Styles label.

4. The first column is where you choose from existing character styles.

   This is what will be applied to text.

5. The second column determines the scope end point: Through or Up To.

   For example, if you choose Through for a nested style that is set for four words, all four words will get the nested style. If you choose Up To, the first three words will get the style and the fourth will not.

6. The third column is where you specify how many items you want InDesign to count in determining the scope's end point.

   For example, if you want to have the first seven characters have the style applied, choose 7. If you want to have the style applied up to the first tab, choose 1.

7. The fourth column is where you specify the scope of text that you're applying the nested style to.

   Figure 20-6 shows the options. They break into two groups: a number of items (characters, words, and so on) and a specific character (tab, em space, and so on). Whatever you choose needs to be consistent in all your text, since InDesign will follow these rules slavishly.

   
   Figure 20-6: The scope options for a nested style determine what text receives the formatting.

8. You can create multiple nested styles in one paragraph, with different rules for each. InDesign applies them in the order in which they appear in the dialog box, and each starts where the other ends. Use the up and down arrow buttons to change the order of nested styles.

9. You can preview the formatting if you had selected sample text before opening the dialog box by checking the Preview option.

10. Click OK when you're done.

    Note ‚  

    The Nested Styles feature is included in the same dialog box as the Drop Caps feature. That's because a drop cap would be the first "nested style" in a paragraph and can never be anything but the first style. By combining the two into one dialog box, InDesign lets you treat a drop cap as part of a series of styles to be applied to a paragraph. If you want only a drop cap, you simply don't create a nested style.

    Note ‚  

    About the only thing missing from the Nested Styles feature is, unfortunately , an effect favored by many designers: applying a format to the first line in a paragraph, usually a paragraph that follows a headline. The most common version of this has the first line formatted in all small caps, then switching to normal capitalization for the rest of the paragraph.

    InDesign CS's Nested Styles feature doesn't support this effect because it requires a specific stop point (number of characters, words, or sentences, or a specific character such as a tab, line break, indent-to-here, em space, en space, or the End Nested Style Character, which lets you set an arbitrary end). But there is no definite end point at the end of the line, as it depends on how InDesign flows and breaks the text, which will be different for each paragraph's first line.

    The best you can do is highlight these manually and apply the small caps attribute yourself, or use the Nested Styles feature and manually insert the End Nested Style Character at the end of each line (choose Type ‚ Insert Special Character ‚ End Nested Style).