How to overlap defined character styless

[Susan J-P]

Greetings:

I'm trying to figure out how to define character styles so they'll overlap
(rather than replace) eachother. For instance, if I define Emphasis to
italicize the default font and Alert to color the font red, I want to be able
to layer both to get an italicized red result. Thus far, I've only been able
to get the desired result by defining a third style to set both the italic
and red formats.

Theoretically, it should be possible to overlap character styles since this
is what Word already does with its Bold, Italic, Underline buttons/keyboard
shortcuts. I just can't find a way in the Styles and Formatting menu to
emulate this behavior.

BTW, I'm using Word2003 on WinXP and Word2000 on Win2K. Thanks for any help
you can provide,

 

[Anne Troy]

No. I don't think it's possible, Susan. You'll have to create that 3rd style
or you're completely defeating the purpose of styles in the first place.
************
Anne Troy
www.OfficeArticles.com

 

[Susan J-P]

I guess it isn't a great surprise that Word can't do this.

However, I don't necessarily agree that this defeats the purpose of styles.
At least in my case, defined styles are used to convey specific meanings and
it's not unusual to have stylistic meanings overlap within a phrase or
sentence. It seems kludgy to me that I would have to define additional styles
to capture the various combinations of overlapped meanings. For example, for
4 different meanings, I would have to define an additional 6 styles to
capture all the possible dual-overlap meanings.

In the current set of technical documents I'm working on, one character
style might mean "this is what you'll type at your keyboard", while another
might mean "this information is proprietary", and another might mean "this is
a definition". There are probably a dozen or so thus far, so you can see
things get complicated in a hurry when meanings need to overlap. It seems to
me that defined character styles could be a powerful way to tackle something
like this (if they would overlap properly).

Thanks for your response, Anne. I appreciate the info.


--
Susan
Technical Writer

No. I don't think it's possible, Susan. You'll have to create that 3rd style
or you're completely defeating the purpose of styles in the first place.
************
Anne Troy
www.OfficeArticles.com

 

[Graham Mayor]

This is one of those times where manual formatting is acceptable - even
desirable. You can apply the italic attribute for emphasis (CTRL+I) and you
can assign the red colour with a keystroke shortcut attached to the
following macro:

Sub MakeItRed()
Selection.Font.Color = wdColorRed
End Sub

http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm


--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Klaus Linke]

Hi Susan,

If you don't mind getting sneaky, you can either use small variations of
black (say RGB 0,0,1, RGB 0,1,0, ...) as "pseudo styles".

Or type some fantasy "style name" in the font dropdown, and set the font
substitution (Tools > Options > Compatibility) to the font that's applied
anyway.

The first should work well if your document doesn't use colored text, the
second if most or all your doc uses the same font.
The second also has the advantage that you can see the applied "character
style" in the font dropdown.

Greetings,
Klaus

I guess it isn't a great surprise that Word can't do this.

However, I don't necessarily agree that this defeats the purpose of
styles.
At least in my case, defined styles are used to convey specific meanings
and
it's not unusual to have stylistic meanings overlap within a phrase or
sentence. It seems kludgy to me that I would have to define additional
styles
to capture the various combinations of overlapped meanings. For example,
for
4 different meanings, I would have to define an additional 6 styles to
capture all the possible dual-overlap meanings.

In the current set of technical documents I'm working on, one character
style might mean "this is what you'll type at your keyboard", while
another
might mean "this information is proprietary", and another might mean "this
is
a definition". There are probably a dozen or so thus far, so you can see
things get complicated in a hurry when meanings need to overlap. It seems
to
me that defined character styles could be a powerful way to tackle
something
like this (if they would overlap properly).

Thanks for your response, Anne. I appreciate the info.