Word-Processor Styles

Formatting is not something most fiction writers consider. After all, it is the author’s job to craft the words, but how those words look on the page is irrelevant. That is a false statement. At first glance, a work of fiction may appear to be just text on the page (ignoring the artistic endeavor of choosing those words). But, at a closer look, every work of fiction includes basic formatting, such as italics for emphasis. Some works of fiction have additional formatting, such as text set as extracts, specialized first paragraphs for each chapter, section breaks within chapters, changes in typeface to indicate meaning or a shift in perspective, and so on. All of this formatting is managed through the use of word processor styles or tags.

What is a style? A style is simply a collection of specifications, such as typeface, color, indentation, line spacing, and so on, that define how the text appears on the page. There are two types of styles: paragraph and character. A paragraph style applies the defined settings to the entire paragraph, while a character style applies the defined settings only to selected letters, numerals, and punctuation marks. For example, Body Text is a common paragraph style. In this definition, the typeface and its font, indentation, and line spacing may be specified. On the other hand, Bold and Ital are common character styles.

How the writer defines the styles used in a manuscript—the appearance—is irrelevant. The name of the style is important. Only the name carries through from the word processor to the layout program. All of the attributes are stripped out and replaced by the attributes the layout artist defines. Suppose you love Comic Sans, which hopefully you do not, and decide your body text should be set in that typeface. So you dutifully defined your Body Text style to be Comic Sans 10/12 (that’s read as “ten on twelve” and means 10 point text on 12 point leading). However, when your manuscript text is imported into InDesign or whatever layout program the publisher is using, the artist will assign to the style Body Text whichever typeface the designer has spec’ed, such as Palatino 11/13.

It is important to note that clicking the Bold button does not apply a character style, rather it manually overrides the underlying settings of the paragraph style. Why is that important to know? Because most layout programs, including InDesign, often do not recognize these overrides. Remember, how the text appears on the page in the word processor is irrelevant, it is the style name that is important. So, if you need a word to be set in ital, don’t click the Ital button, apply a character style to the text. Typically the character style in this case would be named Ital, but your publisher may provide you with a list of style names to use in your project.

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