The Secret Life of Character Styles

Character styles do far more than make text bold or italic. They quietly power some of InDesign’s most useful formatting and automation features, including nested styles, GREP styles, text variables, lists, drop caps, and more. Learn how to use character styles more strategically to control text, automate repetitive formatting, and solve everyday production problems.

By the end of this session, you’ll stop thinking of character styles as “the small paragraph style” and start using them like the automation and consistency tool they actually are.

Key takeaways:

• Format bullets, numbers, drop caps, and selected text independently
• Build running headers from part of a heading with text variables
• Keep phone numbers, product codes, and other text from breaking across lines
• Prevent selected text from hyphenating or triggering spell-check warnings
• Create visible review markup that is easy to apply and remove