Paragraph style without changing italics, etc.?

[GeneralVeers]

I must be some kind of idiot. I’m sure this can be done, but none of the obvious ways work…

I have the Body style defined as Font A, with Font Traits set to [No Change].

So it seems to me that if I have some text set in Font B, italic, with No Style that if I tap on Body, that text should change to Font A, but maintain the italics…right?

Instead, it switches to Font A and loses the italics.

If I have a manuscript that already has things like bold and italics in it, but need to change the style sheet in order to change, say, font, leading, size, indent, etc., but without effecting bolds and italics, how the heck do I do that??? It truly seems like what I’ve described above is the way to do it, but again…I must be some kind of idiot. 

[Hangman]

Hi @GeneralVeers and welcome to the forums,

When setting the Italics in your text using Font B, set them using a Character Style, e.g., Emphasis or Strong Emphasis will give you Italic and Bold Italic for Font B which means when selecting the text and changing it to Font A the italics will be maintained in Font A.

Currently, you are setting the italics as part of the Paragraph Style which means when you change the text to a different font all the text will adopt the paragraph styling of the new text style and you will lose your italics.

[GeneralVeers]

@Hangman, thanks so much! This makes sense.

However, how do I adapt this for a manuscript in .doc or .rtf form that comes from, say, Word or Scrivener or Pages? Do I have to go through those documents and manually do something to every single instance of italics???

[Hangman]

Hi @GeneralVeers,

38 minutes ago, GeneralVeers said:

However, how do I adapt this for a manuscript in .doc or .rtf form that comes from, say, Word or Scrivener or Pages? Do I have to go through those documents and manually do something to every single instance of italics???

Again in your Word, Scrivener or Pages document you would apply Character Styles for your italics. When placed in a Publisher document and the font changed by applying a different text style the italics will be maintained...

Character Styles in Apple Pages | Bold Italic Red Applied to all Instances of the Word Alice

 

The .docx File Place in Affinity Publisher and a New Text Style Applied to the Text

[GeneralVeers]

Ok, wow, that’s very comprehensive and helpful. Sadly, though, it looks like I will have to manually go through the manuscript. Apparently, if you just click the I button in Pages (or Scrivener) or type Command-I, that applies Italics, but I guess somehow not at the character level? So each time I work on a manuscript, I have to manually open the Character Styles menu and choose Italics as opposed to just…typing Command-I.

In the example below, the first circled word was made italic by going into the Formatting menu and selecting Italics. The second circled word was made italic by typing Command-I.

The first one had its formatting persist; the second one did not.

Very frustrating. It adds a lot of friction to have to go into a menu as opposed to just typing a keyboard shortcut. I’ve never seen this behavior in an app before.

I truly appreciate your patience and attention to detail. Thank you so much!

[Hangman]

Hi @GeneralVeers,

In Apple Pages, I'm unsure about Scrivener and Word, you can assign keyboard shortcuts to Character Styles... it's limited to the Function Keys F1 through F8 though that is still better than having to access the menu each time...

If e.g., you applied F7 to the Body Copy and F8 to the Italic Character Styles and you know which words you want to italicise as you're typing you can use the shortcut keys as you type, e.g.,

Bennet heard her just fine. F8 Despite F7 her advanced years...

Or you can go through your text afterwards and single-click mid-word, you don't need to select the whole word, and click F8 to apply the Character Style which is really quick.

Export to a Word File and place in Publisher where you can change text styles to your heart's content and the italics will be maintained...

Here the red words have been styled using the F8 Keyboard Shortcut for the Italic Red Character Style, and the Blue word uses Cmd I. The red italicised words will maintain their formatting when the text style is changed in Publisher, the blue word won't.

[GeneralVeers]

Thanks again, @Hangman. Your explanations are cogent and comprehensive, but unfortunately, it's just not worthwhile for me to go through a five hundred page manuscript and click on every instance of italics. It'll be easier to forgo stylesheets and just select whole chunks of text and format them.

I'm a little baffled by the whole thing because I've never had this problem with, say, InDesign. It's really weird to me that it works this way (not sure why you'd want this as the default and have NO way at all to get around it), but there's nothing to be done for it.

Thanks once more for your help.

[Hangman]

Hi @GeneralVeers,

If you're not relying on Text Styles in Publisher then you can simply place your Word document and change the font from the Font dropdown menu which will maintain the italics from your source document created using Cmd I and may give you what you're looking for but I'm not aware of a way to achieve this using text styles without the Italics using a Character style.

If there is a way to achieve this that I'm not aware of I'm sure someone else will jump in with a solution.

[Oufti]

18 hours ago, GeneralVeers said:

it's just not worthwhile for me to go through a five hundred page manuscript and click on every instance of italics.

You could probably use the Find and replace function to automate this. If you click on the cog button on the right of the panel, you can search for specific formatting and replace it with another. 

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, Hangman said:

Hi @GeneralVeers,

If you're not relying on Text Styles in Publisher then you can simply place your Word document and change the font from the Font dropdown menu which will maintain the italics from your source document created using Cmd I and may give you what you're looking for but I'm not aware of a way to achieve this using text styles without the Italics using a Character style.

If there is a way to achieve this that I'm not aware of I'm sure someone else will jump in with a solution.

I may have lost some context from this discussion, but can't you:

1. Create a Text Style, possibly based on an existing one.
2. Change its characteristics (Font, etc.) as you want.
3. Select the text in the document.
4. Right-click the Text Style in the Text Styles panel and choose "Apply <style-name> to paragraphs and preserve local formatting"?

[Hangman]

22 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I may have lost some context from this discussion, but can't you:

1. Create a Text Style, possibly based on an existing one.
2. Change its characteristics (Font, etc.) as you want.
3. Select the text in the document.
4. Right-click the Text Style in the Text Styles panel and choose "Apply <style-name> to paragraphs and preserve local formatting"?

No, you've not lost any context and simply applying the New Style without the need to Apply <style-name> to paragraphs and preserve local formatting works.

I'm unsure what I did previously but whatever it was I was seeing the same result as @GeneralVeers but now text formatting is being correctly honoured for italics created using Cmd I and Bold text created using Cmd B when simply applying the new text style... 🤔

[GeneralVeers]

3 hours ago, Oufti said:

You could probably use the Find and replace function to automate this. If you click on the cog button on the right of the panel, you can search for specific formatting and replace it with another. 

Huh! Interesting idea! Thanks!

[GeneralVeers]

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I may have lost some context from this discussion, but can't you:

1. Create a Text Style, possibly based on an existing one.
2. Change its characteristics (Font, etc.) as you want.
3. Select the text in the document.
4. Right-click the Text Style in the Text Styles panel and choose "Apply <style-name> to paragraphs and preserve local formatting"?

 

2 hours ago, Hangman said:

No, you've not lost any context and simply applying the New Style without the need to Apply <style-name> to paragraphs and preserve local formatting works.

I'm unsure what I did previously but whatever it was I was seeing the same result as @GeneralVeers but now text formatting is being correctly honoured for italics created using Cmd I and Bold text created using Cmd B when simply applying the new text style... 🤔

And, yeah, this works for me, too... Wild! Thank you, @walt.farrell! This is EXACTLY what I needed!