Text keeps changing to "no style" - help

[Jayt]

Hi

I am totally stuck on this.  I have imported a book and managed to change the style of the text fine, and headings by altering the styles in the panel.

However, whenever I now click into a text box and add new text it reverts to "no style" with arial double line spacing.  Even if I just do a return, its a double line "no style" one and I have to select it and click a style.

How can I set things up so when I click into a text box and type that it sticks to a certain style please?

 

[LassiP]

Hi.

I'm trying to find out whats wrong in your file, but am not quite sure, so these are more like guesses.

Just to make sure. Are you using Affinity Publisher? I'm trying to repeat the issue using Publisher, so am not sure if my suggestions are any good if you're using Affinity Design.

Was the panel you used named "Paragraph", or "Character" or was it the "Text styles" panel. The last of the three is the right one.

Have you changed the text styles by editing the paragraph styles, or just by editing text styles? Editing paragraph styles would be the right way to change the text of whole paragraphs.

Hope this helps.

[Jayt]

Hi

Yep I'm in publisher.

So:

I create a new text box in a document.

When I type into it, it defaults to the "no style" text.

If I click a style before I start typing, it follows it.

BUT if I do a return it then defaults back to the "no style" option using arial and double line spacing, and there seems no way to alter this.

The only way I can get it to work is to type using "no style" and then select the text and then hit a style in the  text styles tab.

I cant work out how to apply a chosen default style whenever I type.

 

 

[LassiP]

Hi.

I need to ask little more questions. Which of these styles is it? If it is the one I outlined with blue, then I guess that might be because it is where you control things like emphasis and strong emphasis. Kinda like pressing command/control+i for italics. The one I outlined with green is the paragraph style, which means it is the style of the whole paragraph, and in most cases (excluding headings) the style of the following paragraph and the paragraph after that etc. That should not change on its own...

Except if the style you use is set in a way that the next style is "no style" which would be very interesting.

[thomaso]

40 minutes ago, Jayt said:

BUT if I do a return it then defaults back to the "no style" option

Check in the Style Editor Window what is set for "Next Style". To keep the current style for following paragraphs set it to "Same Style".

[LassiP]

Here's a quick tour to help setting paragraph styles.

On the side panel, there's the Text Styles tab. If I was trying to edit the body-style. I'd klick the icon inside the blue circle. The icon on the left of the style tells me, that "Body" is a paragraph style.

Then I'd klick "edit 'body'".

This little window warrants much study, for it can make your text far more interesting than just having a nice font. Now I'll how ever show, where you can find out wether the following paragraph style is set to something it shouldn't be. First. Click "style" if it is not blue already. Then nottice the area within blue circle. It tells me that "body" is based on a style named "Base", so anything that hasn't been set to be something different is just as it is in "Base". Beneath that, there might be something wrong, if everything else is set just right. Next style should usually be the same for normal paragraphs. 

[LassiP]

So now there is one instruction to do the trick with just my one sentence, one with an image by thomaso and one with three images I was writing when thomaso put his explanation. Hope were on the right tracks...

I need to learn to resize the images I put in the forum. "This little window..." doesn't look that little when I post it here...

[Jayt]

Thank you so much both of you.

The changing "next style" to "same style" stops it flipping to "no style".

What I cant work out is why on earth you'd want or need for text styles to keep changing every time you hit return.  Surely if you pick a style then....thats the style you want to use until you change it 😄

[Old Bruce]

3 minutes ago, Jayt said:

What I cant work out is why on earth you'd want or need for text styles to keep changing every time you hit return.  Surely if you pick a style then....thats the style you want to use until you change it 😄

This would be useful if you have a Heading style or an emphasized Quote style that you want for one line/paragrph of text and then have the regular Body style of text to be the next paragraph.

I never actually type stuff in Publisher, I do it all in text editing applications. But some people do do typing in Publisher and this is a bonus.

Heading   [next style: [First Paragraph]]

First paragraph [next style: [Body]]

Body [next style: [Same Style]]

Body [next style: [Same Style]]

and so on.

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, Jayt said:

What I cant work out is why on earth you'd want or need for text styles to keep changing every time you hit return.  Surely if you pick a style then....thats the style you want to use until you change it 😄

This is what "Next Style" can do automatically for you, so you do not even need to switch manually to leave that style. For instance …

… if you want to use a separate style for certain content, e.g. a short background info or the questions in an interview.

Then to get back to the initial style automatically after this paragraph can be quite helpful, doesn't it?

2 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

I never actually type stuff in Publisher, I do it all in text editing applications. But some people do do typing in Publisher and this is a bonus.

It is a bonus also for those who paste/place the text + style it with "next styles" in 1 click.

[Old Bruce]

9 minutes ago, thomaso said:

It is a bonus also for those who paste/place the text + style it with "next styles" in 1 click.

I don't work with that sort of text, but yes if you have Question followed by Answer followed by Question followed by... this is quite, dare I say; extremely, useful. Sadly I tend to have Question followed by a variable number of Answer paragraphs followed by a two paragraph Question and another variable number of Answer paragraphs.

[thomaso]

16 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Sadly I tend to have Question followed by a variable number of Answer paragraphs followed by a two paragraph Question and another variable number of Answer paragraphs.

It does not need work with every interview to be able to work. Interview was just a sample, there are many use cases, e.g. catalog, business cards, history, event program, menu card, … actually any layout with a repeated pattern of content types which shall be visually differentiated.

It can still be useful if the number of paragraphs varies: Then one could prefer to replace some paragraph breaks by line breaks to keep the auto-formatting working. Ah, I here you asking now for "space after" … 😇… baseline shift, leading override … and soon we come to the missing GREP styles. 😎