Hi Pehr:
Yes, there is a better way to work
You've got most of the way there:
you understand that each style is a "named collection of formatting
properties." That's the first hurdle: to get consistent formatting
throughout a document, apply styles. You're doing that.
When working with styles, it helps to know that each style is somewhere in a
hierarchy. The top of the hierarchy is "Normal" style, and every other style
inherits properties from it (unless you change that, and you should).
In your case, you are setting up styles for body text, so your Level 1 style
should be the top of your personal hierarchy. Set its "Based On" property
to either "Normal" style, or "No Style".
Base each of the other four styles in your hierarchy upon the one above, so
they inherit the properties of it. So Level 2 is based on Level 1, Level 3
is based on level 2, and so on.
That means each lower level starts off as a copy of the style above. Change
what you need to at each level (the Indent) and leave all other properties
unchanged. This allows the properties you did not change to continue to
inherit from the top of the hierarchy. Once you change a property (for
example, the Font) it will be inherited "downwards" in the hierarchy, but
not upwards.
Controlling the "Based On" property of each style is the key to this. Do
not allow inheritance where you don't want it, keep it where you might want
to change a whole group of styles together. For example, I often use
inheritance on the font for a group of styles so I can instantly change a
document from fonts for paper publishing to those for web publishing.
When you're dealing with inherited properties, note that many of the style
properties are "toggle switches". Bold is an example: If you turn bold on
at the top of a hierarchy, and it was ALREADY turned on for one of the lower
levels, then it will be turned OFF by the change. For example, if Levels 1
to 5 are inheriting, and Level 3 is bold, if you set bold from OFF to ON for
Level 1, it will go ON for Levels 2, 4 and 5 but OFF (reversing the original
setting) for Level 3.
Just a hint: Five is too many levels of indentation in a document. The
reader will get confused and lose track of your dependencies. For readers
to understand text easily, the fewer levels the better: if you need to use
more than three levels (Left and two indents...) find a different way to
express your meaning.
Hope this helps
Hi.
I rely heavily on different styles for different levels of indentation
in my documents. Some times I can have as many as 5 nested levels. I
call these Header, level 1, level 2, level 3, level 4, and level 5.
often a paragraph in one level will have some font modifications,
e.g., strike-through and underline.
if i want to change the indentation, i would select a different style,
e.g., go from level 3 to level 2. All that is supposed to do is to
change the indentation.
instead, what i get is a wipe-out of the strike-throughs and
underlines.
is there a better way to work?
Pehr
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John McGhie <
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Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410
