An efficient way to manage styles is to base one Paragraph Style on another so that if the base style changes for any reason, all its associated styles are also updated accordingly.
Typically, for example, a document will have a Body Style, and then associated styles such as Body Indent, Body No Indent, Body Drop Cap and Body Block Quote.
Without this tool any change made to a subordinate style such as Body Block Quote would need to also be manually added to the Body style to ensure all other related styles will also be updated. This tool resolves this problem!
The selected Paragraph Style will be updated, as will all styles based on it.
Type Tools > Create Font Style styles
Where a change of character styling is used to convey meaning, the relevant semantic Character Style should be used to apply that meaning for accessibility.
The use of character level styling on the page for purely visual or decorative reasons does not need to be reflected in this way, but should still be applied with a Character Style if required to be included in digital exports.
When using a Core Set of styles, common font styles such as bold and italic are included but many professional fonts have more font styles included, e.g. Oblique and Semibold.
By using the Create Font Style styles tool, new Character Styles will be created for each font style present in the document to enable them to be applied quickly, cleanly and consistently and tagged correctly for output to EPUB.
Type Tools > Create Language Shift styles
Accessible EPUB documents require that each shift of language is identified wherever it occurs, so that screen-readers can correctly pronounce the text correctly.
By applying these Language Shifts using Character Styles the requisite tags will be created on export.
Tip: One way of checking whether languages have been marked using the Control panel (which won’t be retained for EPUBs) or Character Styles (which will) is to click the Style Override Highlighter button [a+] at the top of the Character Styles panel. All language shifts specified using local formatting will be highlighted in Cyan:
When importing a Word document into InDesign using (InDesign File menu > Place) the program will use its default settings unless its Import Options specify otherwise. You can choose to either change the settings manually or choose a preset at this point. The preset created using Fresh Page Tools consists of our recommended settings, as explained below.
Tip: Hold down the Shift key when selecting a Word document to avoid making Show Import Options the default setting and presenting its dialog box every time you Place a new document from this point.
The settings consist of the following options:
Table of Contents text to OFF as this process will be handled later in the workflow.
Footnotes and Endnotes to ON as the notes will be maintained and the reformatting is relatively straightforward.
Index to OFF as this will generally be handled by InDesign.
Import as Static Text to OFF as solely relates to Endnotes and solutions created before InDesign added its own Endnotes feature.
Use Typographer’s Quotes to ON (to convert straight inch " and feet ' symbols to true quotation marks “” ‘’)
Preserve Styles and Formatting from Text and Tables to ON.
Manual Page Breaks to No Breaks to allow InDesign to specify.
Import Inline Graphics to OFF for any images in the Word document to be imported conventionally into InDesign.
Track Changes to OFF. Whilst InDesign does support the feature to a degree with the Story Editor, it is recommended to import ideally a final, edited version of the Word document.
Import Unused Styles to OFF.
Import Styles Automatically. This leaves both Paragraph Style Conflicts and Character Style Conflicts to Use InDesign Definition to ensure InDesign’s formatting for the styles are applied, rather than retaining Word’s.
Having a list of all the styles available in the document in their respective formats can be helpful for checking all the requisite styles are present and have been applied correctly.
This can also be a useful step in starting a Word template for a workflow mapping Word text to InDesign styles on import.
With the InDesign document open choose GreenLight Tools menu > Fresh Page tools panel
Find out more about using a Design System and Cores Styles here (coming soon…)
Note: If using this tool independently of the Fresh Page System the styles must be placed into Style Group folders
Styles ensure consistent formatting and make allow users to edit documents more efficiently
Choose a style name from a predefined list, or create a custom named style. Once the style has been created, it can be automatically applied to all text in the document with the same formatting.
This useful tool can help you manage and keep track of the styles you’re using and will even sort Style Group folders alphanumerically where present, as well as sorting the respective styles within!
Choose InDesign Window menu > Styles > Paragraph, Character or Object Styles to confirm changes.
