Styles can save time when you apply and revise text formatting, and they give your documents a consistent look. When you change the formatting of a style, all text to which the style has been applied will be updated with the new format.

A paragraph style

includes both character and paragraph formatting attributes, and can be applied to a selected paragraph or range of paragraphs. Choose Type > Paragraph Styles

A character style

is a collection of character formatting attributes that can be applied to a selected range of text. Choose Type > Character Styles.

To define a new style:

1. If you want to base your new style on the formatting of existing text, select the text.
2. Do one of the following:
   * Choose New Style in the Character Styles or Paragraph Styles palette menu.
   * Click the Create New Style button in the Character Styles or Paragraph Styles palette. To keep the appearance and default name of the new style, skip the remaining steps. To change the style, double-click the new style name in the palette.
3. For Style Name, type a name for your new style.
4. To add a shortcut keystroke, make sure Num Lock is turned on in Windows. Then hold down any combination of Shift and Ctrl (Windows) or Alt, Shift, and Command (Mac OS), and press a number on the numeric keypad. You cannot use letters or non-keypad numbers for defining style shortcuts.
5. On the left side of the dialog box, select the group of attributes you want to modify. Specify the desired formatting attributes for your new style.
6. Click OK. The style name appears in the palette. Any changes you made to the formatting options are applied to selected text.

To load styles from another InDesign document:

1. In the Styles palette, do one of the following:
   * Choose Load Character Styles or Load Paragraph Styles in the Styles palette menu.
   * Choose Load All Styles in the Styles palette menu to load both character and paragraph styles.
2. Double-click the InDesign document containing the styles you want to import.