Introduction to Styles: Paragraph, Page, and Character Styles Title: Version: First edition: First English edition: Introduction to Styles: Paragraph, Page, and Character Styles 1.
Real life situation Contents Overview........................................................................................................................................ iii Copyright and trademark information........................................................................................iii Feedback.................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgments..............................................
Real life situation Simple page numbering........................................................................................................ 18 More complex variations......................................................................................................19 The Next Style property............................................................................................................ 19 Make two page styles alternate.....................................................................
Overview Overview Styles are one of OpenOffice.org Writer's most powerful features. They are necessary to use OOo Writer to its full potential. This chapter introduces styles, assuming no previous knowledge from the reader. After reading it, you will be confident using paragraph, page, and character styles. Copyright and trademark information The contents of this Documentation are subject to the Public Documentation License, Version 1.
Introduction Introduction What are styles? Most users are used to writing documents according to physical attributes. For example, one would specify the font family, font size and weight (say, Helvetica 12pt, bold). Styles are logical attributes. We use styles every day. For example, there are two styles of computers: desktop and laptop. Each has its own set of distinctive properties.
Introduction Types of styles OpenOffice.org Writer has five types of styles: • Paragraph styles affect a an entire paragraph. • Character styles affect a block of text inside a paragraph. • Page styles affect page formatting (page size, margin and the like). • Frame styles affect frames and graphics. • Numbering styles affect numbered lists and bulleted lists. The first three styles are the most used. Those are the styles covered in this chapter.
Using paragraph styles Using paragraph styles First steps OpenOffice.org uses a tool called the Stylist to manage styles. The concepts of styles and the Stylist are best explained through an example. 1) Create a new document (go to File > New > Text Document or press Control+N). 2) Type “Heading 1” in it. Make sure that the cursor remains in that same line. 3) Press the Stylist icon located on the Function Bar or press the F11 key. This brings up a window called the Stylist (see Figure 2).
Using paragraph styles Using the Apply Style menu The Apply Style menu lists the paragraph styles that are currently in use in the document. One can select styles from this menu, just like the Stylist. As an exercise, press Enter, type some text and select Heading 1 in the Apply Style menu. The text acquires the properties of the Heading 1 style.
Using paragraph styles Figure 4 Headings 1-3 with default styles. Suppose you decide to make some changes to these styles: • Heading 1 should be centered. • Heading 3 should be indented. Center Heading 1 On the Stylist, right-click on Heading 1 and choose Modify. Figure 5 Modifying a style. When the Paragraph Style window pops up, choose the Alignment tab, select Center and click OK.
Using paragraph styles Alignment tab Center text Figure 6 Center Heading 1 Now everything marked as Heading 1 will be centered. If you make another Heading 1, it will be centered as well. Centered Figure 7 Text is centered. Indent Heading 3 On the Stylist, right-click on Heading 3 and choose Modify (as before). When the Paragraph Style window pops up, follow the steps below: 1) Click on the Indents & Spacing tab. 2) Under the Indent section, set the indentation before the text to 1.5cm (0.6 in).
Using paragraph styles The result should resemble Figure 9. Figure 9 Text with the Heading 3 style is indented. Linked styles Some OpenOffice.org styles are linked together. This means that a change in one style affects every style linked to to it. For example, every Heading style (such as Heading 1, Heading 2) is linked with a style called Heading. This relationship is illustrated in Figure 10. Heading Heading 1 Heading 2 Heading 3 Heading 4 Figure 10 Linked styles.
Using paragraph styles Figure 11 Select Heading style. Open the paragraph styles window for the Heading style (right-click > Modify) and select the Font tab. Select the Corsiva font and click OK (see Figure 12). Select Corsiva font Font tab Figure 12 Select Corsiva font for Heading style. Now the fonts of all the heading styles have been changed in a single operation. Your document should now resemble Figure 13.
Using paragraph styles Figure 13 All Heading styles now have the Corsiva type font. Creating custom styles You have seen that the Stylist provides several pre-defined styles, such as Heading 1 and Text body. But what if you need something different, like a poem style, that is not in the Stylist? With OpenOffice.org you can make your own styles to suit your needs. In this section, we will create a Poem style, and a Poem Header style, with the following properties: • Poem: Centered, with font-size 10.
Creating custom styles Figure 14 Create a new style. This brings up the Paragraph Styles window, with the Organizer tab selected. To create a custom style, you have to understand and configure the top three entries. Name This is the name of the style itself, like Heading 1 or Text body. Next Style Set the name to Poem. This is the style that follows the Poem style by default. When you press Enter, this style is used. Linked With Set this value to Poem.
Creating custom styles The next step is to configure the alignment and font properties of this style. • Under the Alignment tab, select centered text. • Under the Font tab, select 10pt font-size. Click OK to save the new Poem style. Congratulations! You just made your very own style. Creating the PoemHeading style Create a new PoemHeading style. Use the same procedure as before, with these changes: • Next style: Select Poem, not PoemHeading. • Linked with: Heading.
Creating custom styles Sample poem It is a good idea to test out your new styles and see if you are happy with them. Your poem should look similar to the one in Figure 17. Figure 17 Sample poem.
Creating custom styles Changing the formatting of your styles One of the main advantages of styles is that they allow the document formatting to be changed after the content has been written. For example, suppose you have written a 100 page book of poetry. Then you decide you don’t like the way the poems look after all. Or perhaps your publisher doesn’t like it. To learn about reconfiguring styles, we will make the following changes: • The Poem style will be indented instead of centered.
Creating custom styles Edited entries Figure 18 Indentation and spacing for the PoemAuthor style. This is how the Indents & Spacing tab should look at this point:Click OK to save this style. Now set the author of the poem (in my case, “Robert Frost”) to the newly created Poem Author style, as described in the Getting started section. Final result After all these changes, the poem should look similar to Figure 19.
Creating custom styles Figure 19 Final result, using three custom styles. Tips and tricks You can make the Stylist display only custom styles. Click on the menu at the bottom of the Stylist window and select “Custom Styles”. As shown in Figure 20, the Stylist only displays Poem, PoemAuthor and PoemHeading. Custom styles view Figure 20 Displaying custom styles only.
Using page styles and page numbering Using page styles and page numbering Page styles are to pages what paragraph styles are to paragraphs. Just as paragraph styles can define paragraph properties (font size, color and others), page styles can define page properties (margins, page size and others). Real life situation Christian is a lawyer from California, USA. For his letters, the first page has his letter head, and subsequent pages only identify the recipient, the date and the page number.
Using page styles and page numbering Page properties Figure 23 Page properties. Page numbering Many people first encounter page styles when they want to number pages. OpenOffice.org (OOo) has a very powerful system for numbering pages, but to make full use of it you need to learn something about page styles. Preliminaries – fields OpenOffice.org uses a feature called fields to manage page numbers. To insert a page number field, select Insert > Fields > Page Number.
Using page styles and page numbering Turn on page header Figure 24 Turn on page header. At this point you should see the header on the current page, as in Figure 25. Page header Figure 25 A page with a page header. What’s so special about headers? The text on the header appears on all pages with that page style (try it!). This property of headers (or footers), along with fields, forms the basis of OOo page numbering. Tip: You can also add a header through the Insert menu: Insert > Header > [page style].
Using page styles and page numbering More complex variations There are a lot of interesting variations that you can apply without further knowledge of page styles. Here are some suggestions: • Right-align the header to make the page number appear on the top-right. • Add the word “page”, so the header reads “page 1”, “page 2”, and so on. • Add the document title, so the header reads “My Poem book, page 12”. Consider using a tab to separate the title from the page number.
Using page styles and page numbering Note: The margins are set this way to make binding easier after the book is printed double sided. This can be accomplished using what you already know of page styles, plus a clever use of the Next Style property. OOo provides two page styles called Right Page and Left Page. First, set the page style Right Page to be followed by Left Page and vice versa. 1) On the Stylist, go to the configuration window for the Right Page style (Figure 28).
Using page styles and page numbering Page margin Figure 30 Set the page margins on the Page tab. In a similar way, set up the page properties for Left Page. • Put the page number on the top-left of the page, and the title on the header (pick a title for this exercise). • Set the right margin to 4cm and leave the others unchanged. Figure 31 illustrates the transitions between Right Page and Left Page. Right Page Left Page Right Page Left Page Figure 31 Right Page and Left Page styles alternate.
Using page styles and page numbering This works as illustrated in the following flowchart (Figure 32). Front Page Left Page Right Page Figure 32 Flow of page styles. Manual page breaks The previous section discussed the Next Style property. This feature is enough for projects with straightforward pagination requirements (for example, reports, letterheads, and small books). But more complex projects require more control over page styles. Manual page breaks provide this control.
Using page styles and page numbering At some point you will want to start a new chapter. Follow these steps: 1) Put the cursor at the end of the chapter, on a blank line of its own. 2) Go to Insert > Manual Break. 3) Select Page break, and under style, choose New Chapter. Choose page break Select style Figure 34 Choose page break, and select the New Chapter page style. Page break Figure 35 illustrates the flow of page styles when using page breaks.
Page break Page break Using page styles and page numbering Left Page Right Page ia c e sp l Right Page Left Page Figure 36 Inserting a page with special formatting. Example: Restart page numbering – a preface Some times you want to reset the page number back to 1. A typical example is the preface for a book. A standard preface has the following properties: • Page numbers are displayed in Roman numerals (i ii iii iv ...). • After the preface, the document starts on a Right Page.
Using page styles and page numbering Set page number format Figure 37 Set page number format to Roman numerals. After the preface is written, we are ready to restart page numbering. Follow these steps: 1) Put the cursor at the very end of the preface, on a blank line. 2) Insert > Manual Break. Select Page break and choose the Right Page style. 3) Put a check mark next to Change page number and set the new value to 1. These settings are shown in Figure 38. Set style to Right Page.
Using character styles Using character styles Character styles are a complement to paragraph styles. Like paragraph styles, they define text properties (font, weight, size), but they are applied to smaller blocks of text than a paragraph. For example, you can use the Emphasis character style to emphasize a word. A couple of character styles used in this document include: • Key strokes use the KeyStroke style. For example, “to set OOo to full screen, press Control+Shift+J”.
Using character styles Using character styles Open the stylist (press F11) and click on the second button at the top bar . This displays the list of available character styles. To apply a character style follow these steps: 1) Highlight the block of text where you wish to apply the style. 2) Double click on the appropriate character style. Some examples include: This example uses the Emphasis character style. Definition: A statement describing the meaning of a word or phrase.
