InDesign defines some standard shortcut keys to apply, among others, italics (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+I), bold (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+B), and smallcaps (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+H). You can see these assignments in the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog.
Unfortunately, semibold is not an option in the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog, so you can't define a shortcut to apply it. But this gap is easy to fill with a script. Copy the script, linked below, to your script folder, then assign Ctrl/Cmd +Shift+ B to the script. Very simple.
From now on, when you press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+B and if the current font family contains semibold, then semibold is used. If the script can't find semibold, it uses bold. If the current font doesn't have any semibold or bold, nothing happens.
Like the original keyboard shorcut, the script toggles: if the current font style is regular (or normal), it applies (semi)bold; if the current style is bold or semibold, it applies regular (or normal). In italic surroundings it applies (semi)bold italic, and it changes a selection to italics if the current style is (semi)bold italic.
26 Dec 2010: catered for different capitalisations of semibold: Semibold and SemiBold.
Click to show script -- to download, right click, then Save Link/Target As
Installing and running scripts
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