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Paragraph Styles in Word

Create paragraph styles for items based on function, not based on formatting. This approach allows you to modify formatting over time and the style names continue to apply. It also prepares you for structured writing in the future.

Name your paragraph styles starting with naming conventions that group styles by function. For example, group procedure-related styles together by starting the style names with Procedure, such as ProcedureIntro, ProcedureStep, and ProcedureSubstep.

Note: Style names should not include a period in their name. The period can cause display issues when ePublisher creates the cascading style sheet entry that defines the appearance of the style.

To simplify formatting and save time for future maintenance and customization, set the default paragraph font and spacing for a base style, such as Normal. Then, base other styles on this base style to inherit the default formatting settings. This process allows you to quickly modify fonts and spacing across styles by modifying only the base style. You can customize settings for each style as needed. The customized settings are not affected when you modify those settings in the base style. To simplify maintenance for heading styles, which often use a different font than your content styles, you may want to base all heading styles on the Heading 1 style to define the font for all headings.

In ePublisher, you can scan the source documents to list all the paragraph styles. Then, you can organize them in ePublisher to allow property inheritance and to streamline the customization process for your generated output.

You may need multiple paragraph styles to define functions that support pagination settings, such as a BodyListIntro format that has Keep with next set. To reduce the number of paragraph styles, you can customize paragraphs to add the Keep with next setting as needed. Customizing this setting on a paragraph does not affect the ability for the paragraph to receive the other formatting settings from the style definition.

To automate and simplify template use, define the paragraph style that follows each paragraph style. This process allows the writer to press Enter after writing a paragraph and the template creates the next paragraph with the style most commonly used next. For example, after a Heading style, the writer most often writes a body paragraph of content.

Common paragraph styles include:

ePublisher projects use custom field code markers, paragraph styles, and character styles to define online features. You need to give the list of markers and styles to the writers so they know how to implement each online feature. The writers use the markers and styles you create to define online features.

The Stationery defines the custom markers and styles. To reduce complexity, you can use the style names defined in the documentation, or you can define the online feature to a different style. The following list identifies additional paragraph styles you may need to support ePublisher online content features:

For more information about enabling a specific online feature, see “Designing, Deploying, and Managing Stationery”.