This tip not only applies to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, it is sound advice for almost every application that uses text formatting, making you a good citizen in our cyber-world! If your Pages content is being passed on to designers, for inclusion in page layout programs, or to be used in a webpage, applying style sheets properly is essential.
Text has two style characteristics; the visual aspect being the choice of typeface, font colour and size, and the second being structural. HTML Tags are examples of structural styles, for example h1, h2, p. These tags should be applied to the first level of headings, secondary heading, and paragraphs respectively. Pages also has structural styles. The default paragraph styles in Pages include, Title, Subtitle, Heading, and Heading 2. Here this have been listed in their hierarchy, and could go on to list Heading 3, Heading 4 ad infinitum.
Apply the appropriate structural style to selected text.
Paragraph styles can only be applied to whole paragraphs, these are usually created by pressing the return key. Therefore a single word used as a heading can be tagged as a paragraph. To apply a style sheet to a text element within a paragraph use Character Styles.
If the colour and fonts of the styles don't match your design, change the type attributes in the text inspector. To do this select an entire paragraph that has been tagged with the style you wish to modify. Then change the type attributes, before clicking the Update button that appears at the top of the Text Inspector.
The automatic creation of Tables of Contents rely on correctly applied paragraph styles.
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