How to copy formatting from one place to another
Use the format painter in Write by Zaweba: click text that looks right, then select the text to change, and the font, size and paragraph settings copy across.
The format painter in Write by Zaweba does exactly this. Click in the text whose look you want, choose Format painter from the Edit menu, then select the text you want to change with the mouse. The character and paragraph formatting copies across in one go. Copy formatting and Paste formatting, also in the Edit menu, do the same job in two steps.
What gets copied
Character formatting covers the look of the letters: font and size, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, text colour, highlight, superscript and subscript. Paragraph formatting covers the shape of the paragraph: alignment, indents, spacing before and after, line spacing, and paragraph borders and shading.
The format painter copies both together. That makes it ideal for matching a paragraph to its neighbours, not just making one word the same colour as another.
Using the format painter step by step
Click in a piece of text that already looks right, such as a paragraph with the right font, size and spacing. Open the Edit menu and choose Format painter. Now drag across the text you want to change. When you let go of the mouse, that text takes on the formatting you copied.
For more than one target, use Copy formatting once, then select each piece of text in turn and use Paste formatting. This is handy when you are tidying a document with several stray paragraphs scattered through it.
When the format painter is the right tool
It shines when you are tidying text pasted from different places. A report built from emails, web pages and old documents ends up with a mix of fonts and spacing. Pick the paragraph that looks right and paint its formatting onto the others.
It also helps when you have formatted one example by hand, perhaps a highlighted warning paragraph with a border and shading, and want a second one to match exactly.
When styles are better
If the same look is needed in many places, a style is better than copying formatting. Write has built-in styles, including Normal, Title, Subtitle, Heading 1 to 3, Quote, List Paragraph and No Spacing, and you can make your own from a selection. Change a style and every paragraph using it updates, which the format painter cannot do. Headings set with heading styles also fill the navigation pane and the table of contents.
A good rule is to use styles for the structure of a document, and the format painter for one-off fixes.
Starting clean first
Sometimes text carries odd formatting you cannot see, such as a slightly different font from a web page. Format, then Clear formatting removes direct formatting from the selection, returning it to its style. Clear it first, then paint the formatting you want, and you start from a known state.
If text came from outside, Paste as plain text in the Edit menu avoids the problem in the first place. The text comes in without any of its old formatting and takes on the formatting where you paste it.
Making it routine
Mistakes are easy to put right: Ctrl+Z undoes a paint as it would any other change, and Write keeps unlimited undo. Once you are used to the format painter in Write by Zaweba, tidying a messy document becomes a few clicks rather than a slow tour of the font and paragraph dialogs.
