A paragraph is any block of text followed by a Return character. For these blocks of text—including headings, body text, footers, callout text, and so on—you can define the appearance, tab spacing, margins, background color, page breaks, and more. If you don’t find a paragraph style with exactly the look you want in the Pages templates, you can modify an existing style, or create a new style.
To modify a paragraph style:
1 Choose View > Show Styles Drawer (or click Style in the toolbar and choose Show Styles Drawer). Select the paragraph style that most closely matches the style you want to design, or select Free Form.
2 Type some text and format it to look the way you want. (For information about formatting the look of text, see “Formatting Text Size and Appearance” on page 47.) 3 Set the text alignment, character and line spacing, and the spacing before and after
the paragraph in the Text pane of the Text Inspector. (For more information, see “Setting Text Alignment and Spacing” on page 54.)
4 If the paragraph style requires special tab stops, set them in the Tabs pane of the Text Inspector. (For more information, see “Setting Tab Stops to Align Text” on page 58.) 5 If you want the paragraph style to be indented relative to the page margins, set the
paragraph indents in the Tabs pane of the Text Inspector.
6 Click More in the Text Inspector to select more formatting options, as described below:
Set the first line indent.
Set the right indent for the paragraph. Set the left indent for the paragraph.
aFollowing Paragraph Style: If you want a particular paragraph style to always follow the current style when you press the Return key, choose the style from the pop-up menu. For example, you might create a photo caption style that should always be followed by a byline style.
bPagination & Break: Select how the paragraph can break across pages. You can specify that lines of this paragraph should always stay together on the same page, should stay with the following paragraph, or can only appear at the top of a page. The last two of these are particularly useful for heading styles. Select the checkbox labeled “Prevent widow & orphan lines” to prevent leaving individual lines on the following or previous pages.
Choose a paragraph style to follow the current one when you press Return.
Select options to determine how the paragraph breaks across pages.
Choose a language for the spelling dictionary to use.
Add a background color to the paragraph.
Remove automatic hyphenation or ligatures, if they are selected for the document.
Set the text above or below the surrounding text.
cLanguage: Choose a language from the pop-up menu to specify the language used to spell-check this paragraph. If your document will include quotes or sections in another language, you can specify a language for the spelling dictionary used in those paragraphs. The spelling dictionary determines how words are spelled and hyphenated.
dRemove hyphenation for paragraph: Select the checkbox if you want to turn off automatic hyphenation for this paragraph style in a document that has automatic hyphenation turned on. (To turn it on for the document, use the Document Inspector. See page 89.)
eRemove ligatures: Select the checkbox if you don’t want to use ligatures in this paragraph style in a document that has ligatures turned on. (To turn it on for the document, use the Document Inspector. See page 89. If any text is selected when you remove ligatures, it will be applied to the selected text as a style override, unless you complete step 7, below.)
fBaseline Shift: Enter a number in the field. A negative number places the text lower than the surrounding text. A positive number places the text higher than the surrounding text. (If any text is selected when you set the baseline shift, it will be applied to the selected text as a style override, unless you complete step 7, below.) gParagraph Fill: Select the checkbox and click the color well to make a color
background appear behind the paragraph. For instance, you can create a heading style that presents white text against a dark background. The color extends from the left paragraph margin to the right.
7 In the Styles drawer, click the arrow to the right of the paragraph style name, and choose one of the following:
aRedefine Style From Selection: Redefines the existing paragraph style for the whole document.
If you choose this, your formatting changes will apply to all other instances of this style throughout the document. (But any character styles that have been applied will not be affected.)
bCreate New Paragraph Style From Selection: This doesn’t alter the existing style, but creates a new style based on the formatting choices you’ve made in the previous steps.
To create a new paragraph style from scratch: 1 Select a paragraph of text.
2 Choose View > Show Styles Drawer (or click Style in the toolbar and choose Show Styles Drawer). In the Styles drawer, select Free Form at the top of the Paragraph Styles list.
3 Format the selected paragraph text so that it looks the way you want. (To learn about formatting text, see Chapter 3, “Formatting Text and Paragraphs.”)
4 Click the Add (+) button at the bottom of the Styles drawer and choose Create New Paragraph Style From Selection.
5 Type a name for the new style.
6 If you don’t want to apply the new style to the selected text, deselect the checkbox labeled “Apply this new style on creation.”
7 Click OK.
Styles you modify or create are available only in the document you’re working in. They can be imported into other documents or templates. To learn how, see page 74.