Pagesmith has two kinds of style: character and paragraph. As you might guess, these styles correspond to the formatting options in the Character and Paragraph views of the sidebar. Every setting in the Character View can be saved in a character style, and every setting in the Paragraph View can be saved in paragraph style.
Styles are saved with a document. You can import styles from one document into another.
When you apply a style to a text selection, Pagesmith will respect the formatting that you have already applied to the text in that selection. For example, if one of the words in the selection is bold, then you can apply a character style to the selection and the word will still be bold. You can, if you wish, force apply the style and override any existing formatting.
When you edit a style, the change is reflected throughout the document immediately. You can create styles, edit styles, remove styles, and import styles.
Styles in Pagesmith have a very powerful feature: inheritance. You can designate a style as a child of another style. A child inherits all the formatting from its parent. You might, for example, have a character style called Text that defines a font size and typeface, and has child styles called Header, Footer, Emphasis, and Citation, each of which defines a different font size. If you decide to change the font typeface in Text, then the child styles will automatically inherit that new typeface; you don’t need to change the child styles at all.
Paragraph styles can include a character style, so when you apply the paragraph style you apply the character style, too. Paragraph styles can also specify the paragraph style that will be applied after you type a return. You might have a paragraph style named Headline that specifies the next paragraph style as Text, so when you type a return at the end of a headline, the next paragraph will use the Text style.