A character style is a collection of character formatting attributes that can be applied to text in a single step. A paragraph style includes both character and paragraph formatting attributes, and can be applied to a paragraph or range of paragraphs. Paragraph styles and character styles are found on separate panels.

When you change the formatting of a style, all text to which the style has been applied will be updated with the new format.

[Basic Paragraph] styles

By default, each new document contains a [Basic Paragraph] style that is applied to text you type. You can edit this style, but you can’t rename or delete it. You can rename and delete styles that you create. You can also select a different default style to apply to text.

Character style attributes

Unlike paragraph styles, character styles do not include all the formatting attributes of selected text. Instead, when you create a character style, InDesign makes only those attributes that are different from the formatting of the selected text part of the style. That way, you can create a character style that, when applied to text, changes only some attributes, such as the font family and size, ignoring all other character attributes. If you want other attributes to be part of the style, add them when editing the style.

Next Style

You can automatically apply styles as you type text. If, for example, your document’s design calls for the style “body text” to follow a heading style named “heading 1,” you can set the Next Style option for “heading 1” to “body text.” After you’ve typed a paragraph styled with “heading 1,” pressing Enter or Return starts a new paragraph styled with “body text.”

If you use the context menu when applying a style to two or more paragraphs, you can cause the parent style to be applied to the first paragraph and the Next Style to be applied to the additional paragraphs. (See Apply styles.)

To use the Next Style feature, choose a style from the Next Style menu when you’re creating or editing a style.

For a video on using text styles, see www.adobe.com/go/vid0076.