How to set up paragraph and character styles in Layout

Set up styles in Layout by Zaweba by formatting one example paragraph the way you want it, making a paragraph style from it, then building related styles on top with based-on so a change at the root flows through the family. Give each style a next style so typing a heading moves straight into body text, add character styles for the small things inside a paragraph such as bold terms or foreign words, and use redefine from selection whenever you tweak an example and want the style to follow.

Styles are the difference between a document you can change in an afternoon and one you have to reformat by hand. They also feed the parts of Layout that read structure: contents pages, running headers, accessible PDF tagging and EPUB export all lean on them.

Paragraph or character style

A paragraph style covers a whole paragraph: font, size, leading, alignment, indents, space before and after, hyphenation, drop caps, rules and the rest. A character style covers a run of text inside a paragraph and only changes what you ask it to, such as italic, small caps or a colour. The rule of thumb is simple. If it applies to the whole paragraph, it is a paragraph style. If it applies to a few words, it is a character style.

Layout has object, table and cell styles too, which work the same way for frames, tables and table cells. Once paragraph and character styles feel natural, the others follow.

Building a family with based-on

Start with a root body style that sets the font and size you use most. Make your other text styles based on it: a first paragraph without an indent, a caption a size smaller, a quote with extra margins. Each one only records how it differs from its parent. Change the root's font and every style built on it changes too, while their own differences stay put.

Headings can have their own root, so all of them share a typeface and you can adjust their spacing in one go. Keep the tree shallow. Two or three levels are easy to follow, and more than that gets hard to reason about.

Next style and quick ways to apply

Next style says which style the following paragraph gets when you press Return. A heading can lead into a first paragraph, and a first paragraph into ordinary body text. Typing a long document then needs far fewer clicks.

Styles can have shortcuts, can be sorted, and can be gathered into groups so the panel stays tidy in a big job. Quick apply lets you type part of a style's name and apply it without hunting in the panel, which is quicker once you know your style names.

Keeping styles clean

Local formatting that differs from the style is called an override. A few are fine. Many mean the style isn't doing its job. Clear overrides puts the selected text back to exactly what the style says. If the override was actually an improvement, redefine from selection does the opposite: the style takes on the formatting of the selected text, and every paragraph using it updates.

When you start a new document you don't have to build everything again. Styles can be imported from another .zala file, so a house set of styles can travel from job to job.

Naming and other mistakes

The most common is naming styles after how they look, such as "Bold 14", rather than what they are, such as "Section heading". Looks change; roles don't. Another is making a new style for every small variation when a character style or a based-on child would do. A third is formatting headings by hand and only discovering at export time that the contents page and the accessible PDF can't see them.

Give the styles a little thought on day one and they repay it on every page after, especially on the day someone asks for the whole document in a different typeface.