Creating Character Styles

Creating character styles is extremely easy. Select the text you want to emphasize with special character formatting and assign it all the character attributes (font type, bold, underline, italic, and so on) that you want to include in the style. You may assign the attributes using either the Font dialog box (by selecting Format, Font ) or the appropriate buttons on the Formatting toolbar. Fonts are covered in Lesson 5, "Changing How Text Looks."

Make sure that the desired text is selected, and then follow these steps to create the style:

1. Open the Styles and Formatting task pane and then New Style ; the New Style dialog box appears as shown in Figure 10.2.

   Figure 10.2. The New Style dialog box allows you to create styles.

   

2. Click the Style Type drop-down box and select Character for the style type.

3. Look in the Formatting area of the New Style dialog box. It shows the text attributes that you have assigned to your selected text. Note that the new style is based on the current style (the default paragraph style or the normal style) plus your added attributes.

4. Type a name for your new style into the Name box.

5. Click OK to conclude the style creation process. You are returned to the Styles and Formatting task pane. Notice that your new style now appears in the Pick Formatting to Apply list in the task pane.

You can now assign the new character style to text in your document as needed. Simply select the text to which you want to assign this unique style, and then select the Styles and Formatting task pane. Select your unique style from the list provided. The style is applied to the selected text.

View All the Text Assigned a Style To select all the text in a document that has been assigned a particular style, select the style in the Styles and Formatting task pane, and then click the Select All button.

When you create your styles, you also have the option of assigning shortcut keys to styles. This allows easy access to a style that you use a great deal in a document.

Styles can also be assigned to custom toolbar buttons making it easy to assign a style with one click of the mouse.