Writer Guide

Other ways of using character styles are described elsewhere in the
Writer Guide. These uses include making chapter numbers, page
numbers, or list numbers larger than the surrounding text and
formatting hyperlinks. When inserting words in different language or
words you do not want the spell checker to detect as mistakes (for
example procedure names in some programming language), character
styles are quite useful because you can define the language to be
applied in the character-style properties.
Why use character styles?
Beginning Writer users often wonder, “Why use character styles?” or
“How is this different from clicking the bold icon to change the font
typeface?” The following real-life event illustrates the difference.
Jean is a technical writer from Australia. She learned the
value of character styles after her publisher told her to
unbold menu paths in her 200-page book. Jean had not
used character styles. She had to edit all 200 pages by
hand, with some help from Find & Replace. This was
the last time Jean failed to used character styles.
Character styles do not have as many options as paragraph styles or
page styles. Their benefits are of a different nature:
• Formatting changes
As Jean’s story illustrates, the ability to make formatting changes
throughout a document can be important. Character styles
provide this.
• Consistency
Character styles help ensure that typesetting guidelines are
applied consistently.
• Focus on content
“Was I supposed to bold keystrokes? How about menus?”
A writer should not have to remember the answers to these
questions. Typesetting details distract you from the real content
of your work. A properly named custom character style (such as
OOoKeyStroke or OOoMenuPath) will remove this burden from
you.
244 OpenOffice.org 3.x Writer Guide
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