All training courses on Adobe InDesign should include coverage of how to use styles to improve workflow and achieve consistency within a document and within multiple documents. Most computer users at least know what styles are: labelled formats which can be applied to your text to save you having to manually apply each formatting attribute by itself. Even users new to InDesign will probably have used styles in Microsoft Word: "Heading 1", "Heading2", "Normal", etc. However, InDesign's use of styles is much more advanced and we always ensure, when we hold InDesign training courses in London, that we underline their importance.
The salient benefits of using styles are, firstly, consistency: the same formats are faithfully applied each time without variations accidentally occurring. Secondly, rapidity: if a heading needs six formatting attributes applied then, without the use of styles, you will have to apply all your attributes manually. If you use a style, you can apply the text formatting with one click or a single keystroke. A third benefit is the ability to change the appearance of your text simply by changing the definition of your styles.
One less obvious benefit of using styles in InDesign is what we might call scalability. Styles play a key role in some of the program's advanced features and documents that do not use styles cannot benefit from these features. For example, a key part of creating XML-based layouts, is the mapping of XML tags to styles within a document.
A second example is encountered when creating tables of contents. InDesign generates tables of contents based on the use of styles. In setting up the table of contents, one specifies which styles are to be tracked. When the table of contents is actually created, InDesign finds each bit of text in the defined style or styles and, if required, places the appropriate page number next to it.
In actual fact, the table of contents feature is more powerful than the name suggests since it can be used to generate a list of anything within a document as long as a particular style has been used consistently throughout. For example, if every photo in a document has a caption formatted with a particular style, the table of contents facility can be used to produce a "list of photographs".
A third example of the advanced use of styles is when working with books; a feature which enables multiple InDesign documents to be treated as one entity for such operations as preflighting, printing and the production of tables of contents. Different users can work on each document within the book and the styles used within all documents can be streamlined by a process called synchronisation.
Because of its importance, we include styles both on our beginners InDesign training courses and on or advanced InDesign training. On our advanced training courses, we explain the use of facilities like nested styles whereby a character style can be embedded within a paragraph style and automatically applied to a given set of characters or words within the paragraph; for example, it might be to all characters up to the first occurrence of an em dash or a colon. - 15634
The salient benefits of using styles are, firstly, consistency: the same formats are faithfully applied each time without variations accidentally occurring. Secondly, rapidity: if a heading needs six formatting attributes applied then, without the use of styles, you will have to apply all your attributes manually. If you use a style, you can apply the text formatting with one click or a single keystroke. A third benefit is the ability to change the appearance of your text simply by changing the definition of your styles.
One less obvious benefit of using styles in InDesign is what we might call scalability. Styles play a key role in some of the program's advanced features and documents that do not use styles cannot benefit from these features. For example, a key part of creating XML-based layouts, is the mapping of XML tags to styles within a document.
A second example is encountered when creating tables of contents. InDesign generates tables of contents based on the use of styles. In setting up the table of contents, one specifies which styles are to be tracked. When the table of contents is actually created, InDesign finds each bit of text in the defined style or styles and, if required, places the appropriate page number next to it.
In actual fact, the table of contents feature is more powerful than the name suggests since it can be used to generate a list of anything within a document as long as a particular style has been used consistently throughout. For example, if every photo in a document has a caption formatted with a particular style, the table of contents facility can be used to produce a "list of photographs".
A third example of the advanced use of styles is when working with books; a feature which enables multiple InDesign documents to be treated as one entity for such operations as preflighting, printing and the production of tables of contents. Different users can work on each document within the book and the styles used within all documents can be streamlined by a process called synchronisation.
Because of its importance, we include styles both on our beginners InDesign training courses and on or advanced InDesign training. On our advanced training courses, we explain the use of facilities like nested styles whereby a character style can be embedded within a paragraph style and automatically applied to a given set of characters or words within the paragraph; for example, it might be to all characters up to the first occurrence of an em dash or a colon. - 15634
About the Author:
The author is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Solutions, a UK IT training company offering Adobe InDesign Classes at their central London training centre.
