Default Paragraph Font

[Jacques]

This is the sort of basic point that I used to understand, but I'm
obviously getting more stupid in my old age. Please bear with me.

My Normal style currently has a font of Bookman Old Style, 12 point.

I have defined a Quotation style, which is based on Normal, but
indented. When I apply the Quotation style, I get an indented paragraph
in Bookman Old Style, 12 point. Fine.

If I apply direct formatting to part of a paragraph in Quotation style,
and then choose Clear Formatting (or Ctrl-spacebar), the font changes to
Times New Roman, 10 point. Why doesn't it go back to Bookman Old Style,
12 point?

In an attempt to understand this, I looked at the Default Paragraph Font
"style" (which I know isn't really a style at all). It is defined as
"The font of the underlying paragraph style + Font: Times New Roman, 10
pt ...". And there doesn't seem to be any way of modifying it. I thought
the Default Paragraph Font was whatever font was currently defined for
the paragraph style in question. How does Times New Roman come to be
overriding that font?

 

[little_creature]

No one who's questiong is stupid and don't worry about your age.
Sometimes word has problems handling style (I have also noticed some when
changing normal style and some are also connected with multi level
numbering). This process should work:

1.Go to Format > font> and select any of the listed font you want to assign
to your normal style and click on Default button in left bottom corner in
the dialog box. You will be warned that this change will affect all document
based on template normal
2.Exit (apple+q) the word but be sure that your normal template is saved -
you will see small dialog box. Otherwise do File > Save All while holding
SHIFT key.
3. Start word again and your normal style should be modified as well as all
based on normal style.

Hope this will help.

 

[Jacques]

Thank you little_creature, but this doesn't solve the problem. I have
modified the Normal style, and that modification has been inherited by
styles based on the Normal style. The problem is that Word seems to
think the Default Paragraph Font for my other styles is not the default
font set by Normal and inherited by my other styles, but a completely
different font. I don't see how Default Paragraph Font *can* be anything
other than the font defined for, or inherited by, the style applied to
the paragraph in question. It seems to be a contradiction in terms.

Jacques

 

[CyberTaz]

You're correct in your understanding of how the Default Para Font *should*
correlate with the Normal style. If you change the default font any styles
based on normal ought to reflect that change.

The first thing I would check is whether Normal is set to Automatically
Update (in the Modify Style dialog).

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Jacques]

Hi Bob. No, Normal is not set to Automatically Update.
Jacques

 

[CyberTaz]

Well... I'm not 100% on this, but the next thing I would be tempted to
suspect is your Normal template. Try testing a new Normal & see if that
makes a difference. If you're not certain of the process take a look here;

http://word.mvps.org/mac/MacWordNormal.html

Just don't *delete* the current Normal if you have any customizations you
aren't willing to part with or recreate.

Set up the same modifications & try out the actions using the new Normal. If
all works it indicates that the old Normal was somewhat corrupted & you can
continue to use the new one. If that *doesn't* resolve the problem come back
with your results.

 

[Jacques]

Bob, it seems that the problem lay not in the Normal template but in the
separate document template I was using. The problem disappears if I
attach the Normal template but comes back if I re-attach the document
template.

So I tried creating a new document template, copying my styles and
macros across from the old document template, and attaching the new
template with Automatically Update Styles on. This seems to have
resolved the problem. I notice that Default Paragraph Font no longer
appears in the list of styles. (I'm still not sure why it should *ever*
appear there.)

I don't know quite what to make of this. I started using a separate
document template because I gathered that this would be safer in view of
the Normal template's tendency to get corrupted. But in this case it
seems to have been the document template that went wrong, and the
problem would not have arisen if I had just stuck to the Normal
template. Was I just unlucky?

John might say that it's retribution for recklessly setting my documents
to automatically update styles from the document template (despite
having removed bullets and numbering from those styles). But isn't it
the *document* that gets corrupted by Automatically Update Styles,
rather than the template?

Jacques

 

[CyberTaz]

Glad you were able to resolve it - didn't realize the doc was based on a
different template. See the interjections below:

Bob, it seems that the problem lay not in the Normal template but in the
separate document template I was using. The problem disappears if I
attach the Normal template but comes back if I re-attach the document
template.

So I tried creating a new document template, copying my styles and
macros across from the old document template, and attaching the new
template with Automatically Update Styles on. This seems to have
resolved the problem. I notice that Default Paragraph Font no longer
appears in the list of styles. (I'm still not sure why it should *ever*
appear there.)

If you want to know more about the Default Paragraph Font concept you might
want to peruse this:

http://word.mvps.org/faqs/customization/DefParaFont.htm (you may have to hit
the refresh button once or twice if using Safari.)

I'm guessing that in your case the template may have been created in an
earlier version of Word & the corruption is what caused it to be listed. It
*doesn't* show up in the style list of the Formatting Toolbar or the
Formatting Palette, but it is listed in the Format>Style dialog if you
select All Styles.

I don't know quite what to make of this. I started using a separate
document template because I gathered that this would be safer in view of
the Normal template's tendency to get corrupted. But in this case it
seems to have been the document template that went wrong, and the
problem would not have arisen if I had just stuck to the Normal
template. Was I just unlucky?

My thought is that you actually did the right thing by creating the
template. There's no guarantee that all would have stayed rosy if you had
modified Normal instead. Unfortunately even template files get corrupted, so
yes, you were just "unlucky" - but...

John might say that it's retribution for recklessly setting my documents
to automatically update styles from the document template (despite
having removed bullets and numbering from those styles). But isn't it
the *document* that gets corrupted by Automatically Update Styles,
rather than the template?

I won't go as strong as "retribution" or "recklessly" , but Automatically
Update is definitely *not* the preferred setting for a number of reasons.
However, there's no guarantee that this is what caused the .dot to go
bonkers.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Jacques]

Glad you were able to resolve it - didn't realize the doc was based on a
different template. See the interjections below:




If you want to know more about the Default Paragraph Font concept you might
want to peruse this:

http://word.mvps.org/faqs/customization/DefParaFont.htm (you may have to hit
the refresh button once or twice if using Safari.)

Thanks, I had seen that, but it doesn't really explain why Default
Paragraph Font should be treated as if it were a style when it's really
just another way of saying "no direct formatting in this paragraph".
Word seems to be designed to allow for the possibility that Default
Paragraph Font might be something other than the default font for the
paragraph style, and I don't see how this could be.

I'm guessing that in your case the template may have been created in an
earlier version of Word & the corruption is what caused it to be listed.

The template was actually created a couple of weeks ago, in Word 2004.

It
*doesn't* show up in the style list of the Formatting Toolbar or the
Formatting Palette, but it is listed in the Format>Style dialog if you
select All Styles.

It showed up in my Formatting Palette as long as it was defined as Times
New Roman. It's gone from there now. (When I said I copied the styles
across to the new template, I should have said I copied all the styles
*except* "Default Paragraph Font".)

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Jacques:

It's a careless naming convention...

"Clear Formatting" takes the paragraph back to Normal style. "Default
Paragraph Font" takes it back to the underlying font of the style applied.
It's the old Command + SpaceBar command that nobody could remember

And yes, both of them depend on the (chain of) templates attached. The
properties in use come from the closest available context.

So if you have a Normal Template, a global add-in and an attached template
all attached to a document, and the global template is not loaded, and the
style is not available in the attached template, the copy properties in use
will be drawn from the Normal template.

These long-chain hierarchies of inheritance can become very complex. My
suggestion is to avoid these in documents you want other users to work with,
because they won't know what is going on and they will break the documents.

Cheers

Thanks, I had seen that, but it doesn't really explain why Default
Paragraph Font should be treated as if it were a style when it's really
just another way of saying "no direct formatting in this paragraph".
Word seems to be designed to allow for the possibility that Default
Paragraph Font might be something other than the default font for the
paragraph style, and I don't see how this could be.


The template was actually created a couple of weeks ago, in Word 2004.


It showed up in my Formatting Palette as long as it was defined as Times
New Roman. It's gone from there now. (When I said I copied the styles
across to the new template, I should have said I copied all the styles
*except* "Default Paragraph Font".)

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Jacques]

Hi John

It isn't even as logical as that. It seems that Clear Formatting applies
the Normal paragraph style if --
(a) the whole paragraph is selected (i.e. all the text in the paragraph,
with or without the paragraph mark), or
(b) nothing is selected.

If some of the paragraph is selected but some is not, Clear Formatting
leaves the paragraph style alone but restores the default paragraph font
to any text that is selected. If it is only the paragraph mark that is
selected, Clear Formatting has no effect at all.

Presumably this is yet another example of Microsoft making the program
less logical so as to suit the average user who doesn't understand its
logic. In my experience most users refuse to have the paragraph marks
visible on screen, even if they know that that's an option. If the user
can't see the paragraph mark, s/he is unlikely to know or care whether
or not it is currently selected.

I'm increasingly tempted to go back to Winword 97, or maybe v. 6.

Jacques

 

[Michel Bintener]

Hi Jacques,

this is indeed the way Word behaves. You can try this with any other
paragraph style: say for instance you have a regular Normal paragraph and a
Heading 1 style. If you select the entire Normal paragraph, or if you keep
your text cursor in there without any selection, applying the Heading 1
style will change the entire paragraph to Heading 1. Selecting the entire
paragraph of course changes the entire paragraph; if there is no selection,
Word starts looking for selected characters and cannot find any, so it
assumes you want to make changes to the paragraph in which the text cursor
is placed.

If you only select a few words, that's where the problem starts: you are
basically telling Word that you want to apply a *paragraph* style to *a few
words* only, which, according to Word's internal logic, cannot be done.
Instead, Word applies the Heading 1 style as some sort of temporary
character style, i.e. it formats the text the way Heading 1 is formatted,
but it leaves the Normal style intact, since a paragraph style can only be
applied to an entire paragraph.

I can see why this idiosyncrasy might bother people, but in some twisted
way, it seems to make sense. Or maybe I've just been using Word for so long
that I have internalised its irrational behaviour.

Hi John

It isn't even as logical as that. It seems that Clear Formatting applies
the Normal paragraph style if --
(a) the whole paragraph is selected (i.e. all the text in the paragraph,
with or without the paragraph mark), or
(b) nothing is selected.

If some of the paragraph is selected but some is not, Clear Formatting
leaves the paragraph style alone but restores the default paragraph font
to any text that is selected. If it is only the paragraph mark that is
selected, Clear Formatting has no effect at all.

Presumably this is yet another example of Microsoft making the program
less logical so as to suit the average user who doesn't understand its
logic. In my experience most users refuse to have the paragraph marks
visible on screen, even if they know that that's an option. If the user
can't see the paragraph mark, s/he is unlikely to know or care whether
or not it is currently selected.

I'm increasingly tempted to go back to Winword 97, or maybe v. 6.

Jacques

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)

***Always reply to the newsgroup.***

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

I agree that it's not "logical", however it *is* by design.

And what you say is exactly correct: they broke the formatting mechanism in
Word because "research" convinced them that the average user did not
understand how to use it.

So rather than designing the formatting mechanism better, they wrecked the
style tool by enabling "partially applied styles". Nothing we have been
able to say so far can convince Microsoft that nobody who uses styles EVER
wants them "partially applied".

There's another awesome absurdity that you may not yet have discovered,
since you are on a Mac. When Word partially applies a style, it creates a
character style with the same name as the paragraph style and applies that.

So now you have two same-named styles with completely different purposes and
effects. Most corporate users have completely given up trying to learn
styles now, because no matter what they try, the formatting effects are
random.

Sad, really...

Cheers

Hi John

It isn't even as logical as that. It seems that Clear Formatting applies
the Normal paragraph style if --
(a) the whole paragraph is selected (i.e. all the text in the paragraph,
with or without the paragraph mark), or
(b) nothing is selected.

If some of the paragraph is selected but some is not, Clear Formatting
leaves the paragraph style alone but restores the default paragraph font
to any text that is selected. If it is only the paragraph mark that is
selected, Clear Formatting has no effect at all.

Presumably this is yet another example of Microsoft making the program
less logical so as to suit the average user who doesn't understand its
logic. In my experience most users refuse to have the paragraph marks
visible on screen, even if they know that that's an option. If the user
can't see the paragraph mark, s/he is unlikely to know or care whether
or not it is currently selected.

I'm increasingly tempted to go back to Winword 97, or maybe v. 6.

Jacques

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Jacques]

Thanks for this explanation, Michel. I hadn't realised that this is the
effect of applying a paragraph style when only part of a paragraph is
selected. I hadn't realised it because I never do this. If I want to
change the whole paragraph, I either select the whole paragraph or (more
likely) just put the insertion point somewhere in the paragraph before
applying the paragraph style. I wouldn't select *part* of the paragraph.
Why should I?

So, if Microsoft wants to cater for people who, for reasons best known
to themselves, carefully select three words in a paragraph and then
apply a paragraph style, it doesn't really bother me because it doesn't
affect me. What does bother me is that, if I select all the text in a
paragraph (but not the pilcrow) and hit Ctrl-space* as I have done a
million times in Winword, it doesn't just remove the direct formatting
but changes the style to Normal. I resent Word's assumption that I must
have meant to select the whole paragraph. If I'd meant to do that, I
would have done it.

*I expect the Mac default is Cmd-space.

 

[Clive Huggan]

Hello Jacques,

First, to clarify: the default command for stripping down character
formatting to that of the underlying paragraph style in Mac Word is
Control-spacebar, as on the PC, not Command-spacebar (but the command for
stripping down paragraph formatting to that of the paragraph style is
Command-Option-q on the Mac, but Control-q on the PC. John has been known to
get confused there, but I sometimes suspect he drops it in to see if I'm
paying attention. ;-)

Now, re your comment:

What does bother me is that, if I select all the text in a
paragraph (but not the pilcrow) and hit Ctrl-space* as I have done a
million times in Winword, it doesn't just remove the direct formatting
but changes the style to Normal.

I don't get that behaviour in Word 2004 (OS 10.4.3 -- call me nervous). All
that happens is that any direct formatting is removed -- whether applied
directly, for example via Command-b, or as a particular character style such
as "Strong" applied via Command-Shift-s followed by the character style name
or suffix abbreviation. The Control-spacebar keyboard shortcut will take
the formatting back to Normal style only if the paragraph itself is styled
as a Normal paragraph, not if the paragraph style is something else.

But I'm assuming this behaviour is occurring when you are in your
"Quotation" style, not Normal style, because of your remark in your initial
post:

"I have defined a Quotation style, which is based on Normal, but
indented. When I apply the Quotation style, I get an indented paragraph
in Bookman Old Style, 12 point..."

If my assumption is correct, the thing I'm curious about is whether your
paragraph becomes formatted in Normal style as a result of your "Quotation"
style being based on Normal style, or of its own accord -- i.e., as if
Command-Shift-n had been keyed.

So here's an idea: create a style based not on Normal but on "no style" and
see whether the same phenomenon occurs.

One reason I can't replicate your problem [can anyone else, please?] is that
none of my styles is based on Normal, for reasons explained on pages 91-92
of my notes on the way I use Word for the Mac, titled "Bend Word to Your
Will", which are available as a free download from the Word MVPs' website
(http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Bend/BendWordToYourWill.html). The way I set up a
style for body text is described on page 156.

Thinking further, it might be time for you to mention whether you are on an
Intel-powered Mac running Rosetta or not; that could conceivably be part of
the problem as a result of some of the font misbehaviour we see occurring (I
won't be much help on that, since I'm on a pre-Intel PowerBook -- call me
nervous again). And it would be useful to know whether the behaviour occurs
when Times New Roman is the font.

I hope this helps to make progress in getting to the root of the problem,
which I don't yet see as having been reported by others and may still have
origins in your overall set-up -- i.e. of Word, of your hardware/OS, or of
the fonts used (forgive me, please, if I have missed something; so far I've
only been watching while others have given you feedback and my understanding
of your problem may not yet be complete).

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
============================================================

Thanks for this explanation, Michel. I hadn't realised that this is the
effect of applying a paragraph style when only part of a paragraph is
selected. I hadn't realised it because I never do this. If I want to
change the whole paragraph, I either select the whole paragraph or (more
likely) just put the insertion point somewhere in the paragraph before
applying the paragraph style. I wouldn't select *part* of the paragraph.
Why should I?

So, if Microsoft wants to cater for people who, for reasons best known
to themselves, carefully select three words in a paragraph and then
apply a paragraph style, it doesn't really bother me because it doesn't
affect me. What does bother me is that, if I select all the text in a
paragraph (but not the pilcrow) and hit Ctrl-space* as I have done a
million times in Winword, it doesn't just remove the direct formatting
but changes the style to Normal. I resent Word's assumption that I must
have meant to select the whole paragraph. If I'd meant to do that, I
would have done it.

*I expect the Mac default is Cmd-space.

Hi Jacques,

this is indeed the way Word behaves. You can try this with any other
paragraph style: say for instance you have a regular Normal paragraph and a
Heading 1 style. If you select the entire Normal paragraph, or if you keep
your text cursor in there without any selection, applying the Heading 1
style will change the entire paragraph to Heading 1. Selecting the entire
paragraph of course changes the entire paragraph; if there is no selection,
Word starts looking for selected characters and cannot find any, so it
assumes you want to make changes to the paragraph in which the text cursor
is placed.

If you only select a few words, that's where the problem starts: you are
basically telling Word that you want to apply a *paragraph* style to *a few
words* only, which, according to Word's internal logic, cannot be done.
Instead, Word applies the Heading 1 style as some sort of temporary
character style, i.e. it formats the text the way Heading 1 is formatted,
but it leaves the Normal style intact, since a paragraph style can only be
applied to an entire paragraph.

I can see why this idiosyncrasy might bother people, but in some twisted
way, it seems to make sense. Or maybe I've just been using Word for so long
that I have internalised its irrational behaviour.

Hi John

It isn't even as logical as that. It seems that Clear Formatting applies
the Normal paragraph style if --
(a) the whole paragraph is selected (i.e. all the text in the paragraph,
with or without the paragraph mark), or
(b) nothing is selected.

If some of the paragraph is selected but some is not, Clear Formatting
leaves the paragraph style alone but restores the default paragraph font
to any text that is selected. If it is only the paragraph mark that is
selected, Clear Formatting has no effect at all.

Presumably this is yet another example of Microsoft making the program
less logical so as to suit the average user who doesn't understand its
logic. In my experience most users refuse to have the paragraph marks
visible on screen, even if they know that that's an option. If the user
can't see the paragraph mark, s/he is unlikely to know or care whether
or not it is currently selected.

I'm increasingly tempted to go back to Winword 97, or maybe v. 6.

Jacques


"John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]" <[email protected]>
wrote:

Hi Jacques:

It's a careless naming convention...

"Clear Formatting" takes the paragraph back to Normal style. "Default
Paragraph Font" takes it back to the underlying font of the style applied.
It's the old Command + SpaceBar command that nobody could remember

 

[John McGhie [MVP -- Word and Word Mac]]

I looked it up in the Help, since I knew you were watching...

--

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Business Analyst, Consultant Technical Writer
Microsoft MVP (Word, Word for Mac)
Sydney, Australia +61 (0)4 1209 1410

 

[Clive Huggan]

I looked it up in the Help, since I knew you were watching...

Hmm, but I get Ctrl-spacebar in the document showing all keyboard commands
which I initiated on first installing Word 2001 (created in accordance with
the Help topic "Print a list of shortcut keys").

So does that mean this command was changed in Word X or Word 2004?

Just a moment...

<Looks at Word 2004 Help>

Hang on!! The Help entry for "Keys for formatting characters and
paragraphs", under "Apply character formats", reads "CONTROL+SPACEBAR
Remove manual character formatting" (upper case is from copying it, not
shouting.*

Que?

C'Mon, Daiya, Beth, Elliott cobber, Michel, Bob, Paul et al -- join in and
put me out of my suffering...

* [I would never shout; I am diplomatic, though the art of diplomacy is to
tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they will look forward to the
journey, as the saying goes.]

[PS: I hope this doesn't deflect Jacques from the questions I asked in my
post yesterday, because at last count he still had his problem.]

CH
===

 

[Elliott Roper]

Hmm, but I get Ctrl-spacebar in the document showing all keyboard commands
which I initiated on first installing Word 2001 (created in accordance with
the Help topic "Print a list of shortcut keys").

So does that mean this command was changed in Word X or Word 2004?

Just a moment...

<Looks at Word 2004 Help>

Hang on!! The Help entry for "Keys for formatting characters and
paragraphs", under "Apply character formats", reads "CONTROL+SPACEBAR
Remove manual character formatting" (upper case is from copying it, not
shouting.*

Que?

C'Mon, Daiya, Beth, Elliott cobber, Michel, Bob, Paul et al -- join in and
put me out of my suffering...

Well, I kept most mousy quiet O Best Beloved do you see, because I
could not for the life of me remember whether I had changed it when the
Word was new and All. (That's Kipling parody, not Shakespeare, Clive)

ResetChar is ctrl-space here. cmd-space has been given back to Spotlight
ResetPara is command-opt-q.

ResetChar only works on the selection, it does nothing if nothing is
selected.

ResetPara is what I *think* John is talking about, so how can I say
this diplomatically? We are all at least partly right?