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Introduction to styles
Working with styles needs a new mind set. Those brought up in the typewriter age often seem to have something of a mental block. Paragraph styles are an alternative means of managing layout with less effort and more consistency than is possible with a typewriter.
Definitions
- Style The style of a paragraph is the formatting details (including font attributes [name, size, colour,...], spacing, indents...). These details can be stored as a named style (eg Large italics). When Large italics is selected for a paragraph, the paragraph is formatted accordingly, guaranteeing consistency.
- Template To standardise formats across several documents, text and styles can be stored in a template (eg My letter heading). Basing new letters on the My letter heading template makes the look and feel of all your letters the same.
Using styles rather than applying specific formatting to paragraphs is a great time-saver, ensuring a manuscript is consistently formatted and allowing easy changes to layout. For more, see paragraph styles
See also getting started with Writer
pages/style_intro.txt updated 21:04 Mar 26 2006
Working with styles
The excellent implementation of Styles is a major benefit of Writer. View styles by pressing F11 and then click one of the icons at the top of the Styles and Formatting pane to show existing styles of various kinds. Single click to select a style, right click to view the detailed properties or add a new style. Double click to apply a style to the current document at the cursor location.
Applying paragraph styles (other type of styles work in a similar way)
- With the cursor anywhere in the target paragraph, either select a style from the drop-down list in the toolbar or double-click the style in the Styles and Formatting pane (toggle on/off with F11).
Creating and modifying styles
- To modify a style, right-click the style in the Styles and Formatting pane and select Modify. Select a tab and make the desired alterations.
- To create a new style, right-click in the Styles and Formatting pane and select New
To aid consistency, it is often advisable to make new styles dependent on a suitable base style, eg default
Managing styles
- Copy styles between templates and documents using File > Templates > Organize
- Only one template can be attached to a document and it cannot be replaced with another. To attach a document to a different template, create a new document based on the target template and copy and paste all text from the old document.
- To review a document's style sequence do Edit > Find and Replace check More options and then check Search for styles. Select a style and click Find All, thus making visible all instances.
pages/style_tips.txt updated 20:59 Aug 31 2006
What are paragraph styles?
The two main approaches to formatting paragraphs are explicit formatting and paragraph styles.
- Explicit formatting:
Formatting applied using Format > Paragraph, eg to justify the text or indent the paragraph
Formatting is saved with each paragraph and formats easily become inconsistent. If formatting needs to be amended, eg to change the indent, you must select all the relevant paragraphs and use Format > Paragraph again, time consuming and error prone.
- Paragraph styles:
Formatting applied by selecting a style from the drop-down list on the toolbar or in the Formatting and Styles pane (click F11 to show)
If the required formatting is not available, create a new style. Thus, formatting details are stored only in one place. If formatting needs to be amended, eg to change the indent, modify the style and all linked paragraphs will change.
Paragraph styles is by far the best option. Consistency is guaranteed because the format definition is in a single place. You do not need to select paragraphs to amend formatting. Simply modify the paragraph style and all dependent paragraphs automatically adopt the changes.
pages/style_para.txt updated 18:04 Feb 5 2006
Using Page styles
The availability of Page Styles is a major benefit of Writer. View page styles by pressing F11 and then click the fourth icon at the top of the Styles and Formatting pane to show existing styles. Until you change them, most documents use two page styles, First Page for the first page and Default for all the others.
You can control which styles are applied to pages in two ways, either by adjusting the page style sequence in the Organizer tab (eg if you want a document with right and left pages) or by inserting a manual page break in a document and setting the page style. (Page breaks created with Ctrl+Enter do not work this way, you must use Insert>Manual Break>Page Break.)
- To apply a page style, click anywhere in the page to which you want to apply the style to position the cursor
- In the Styles and Formatting pane, double click the style
When does a new page occur?
- When a page is full [Next Style]
- When a paragraph style is set with Page Break before [Next Style or Set Style]
- After a page break is inserted either with Ctrl+Enter [Next Style] or Insert>Manual Break>Page Break [Next Style or Set Style]
What happens to page style?
At the start of a new page, the page style will be the Next Style set in the page style of the previous page (shown as [Next Style] above) unless a specific style for the new page has been set (shown as [Set Style] above)
Page style example
As an example of the use of page styles, for books, it is common to have the first few pages Roman numbered (i,ii,iii...) and the main book content Arabic numbered (1,2,3...). Here is what you need to do:
clean up document
- remove any existing page numbers completely (select the surrounding box on any page and click delete)
set up appropriate page styles
- click F11 to show styles
- select page styles (4th icon in pane)
- right click on default page style and click Modify...
- on page tab, make sure Format i,ii,iii... is selected
- on footer tab, make sure Footer on box is checked
- click OK
- right click on default in the panel and select New...
- type a name for the page style, say Main
- on page tab, make sure Format 1,2,3... is selected
- on footer tab, make sure Footer on box is checked
- click OK
apply page styles and page numbers to document
- immediately before main book content (eg Chapter 1) do insert>manual break>page break>
- under Style select Main
- check Change page number and set the number to 1
- click OK
- click in the footer beyond the Chapter 1 heading to position cursor
- do insert>field>page number
- click OK and do whatever other formatting you want (eg centre and type other characters to create say - 1 -)
- click OK
- above chapter 1, click in the footer to position cursor
- do insert>field>page number
- click OK and do whatever other formatting you want (eg centre and type other characters to create say - iii -)
- click OK
- click save!
OnePoyle Book template
The template includes suitable page styles First Page, Roman and Main for normal editing and Book First Page, Book Roman and Book Main for book layout. If you change the page style you may have to re-insert page numbers.
pages/style_page.txt updated 22:59 Apr 15 2007
Using templates
Templates are special documents in which style is pre-defined.
Any document can be saved as a template. Do File > Templates > Save and type a suitable name. (Note: File > Save as and selecting Text Document Template does something slightly different and is not what you usually want)
New documents from a template
- do File > New > Templates and Documents and select the target template
Conversion of existing manuscripts to OnePoyle Book format
For the best results, follow this procedure:
- open an old document which is to be converted
can be a Word document, opened directly in Writer - create a first new document based on the OnePoyle Book template
- copy and paste all text from the old to the new
text keeps its original style, but template styles are now available - close the old document
- set the style sequence
- create a second new document based on the OnePoyle Book template
- copy and paste all text from the old to the new
this step removes any vestiges of the styles from the old document - save the second new document with any name, but the same name as the old may help
type should be OpenDocument text. You may prefer to save into a new directory. - close the first new document without saving
pages/templates.txt updated 13:50 Feb 8 2006
Solving style problems
Even when you have done your best, it’s likely minor problems will remain. Here's how to find and correct them. Correction is straightforward and not particularly time consuming. Once done, you will have a high technical quality manuscript.
Make a list of the paragraph styles you intend to use and what they are for in a separate document (your standard styles). This should be a short list.
Open the Styles and Formatting pane (F11) and select Applied styles at the bottom. You may find it helpful to display paragraph marks on screen (click the ¶ icon). Inspect each of your standard styles to check they are defined as you expect and make any corrections.
Inspect any styles not on your list and investigate any that you don’t expect to see. (Note: The list may include styles not in use that other styles depend on, eg default You can select all instances of a particular style with the Edit > Find and Replace To change the style of a selection, select the new style and click Replace all. When you have finished, there should be no paragraphs styles other than your standard ones.
pages/style_final.txt updated 17:55 Feb 14 2009
