Here’s something fun for you to try! Nested styles can be repeated throughout a paragraph to easily create stylized text. We’ll show you how to alternate colored words as a basic example, but take the time to experiment with nested styles and see what you can create.

Create Repeating Nested Styles

  1. Create character styles that you want to use. Example: orange word, blue word, green word.
  2. Create a paragraph style, with the cursor inserted in the paragraph you want to format, and with the Preview option selected so you can see the results of any changes being made.
  3. Select Drop Caps and Nested Styles from the option list in the New Paragraph Style dialog.
  4. Click New Nested Style and choose the desired character style. Repeat this process three times, inserting each character style you created.
    nested-styles-add-new
  5. For the fourth nested style, select [Repeat] in the character style area, and specify how many nested styles will be repeated. Note: The [Repeat] nested style should always be the last item in the list of styles you want to repeat. Any styles after the [Repeat] in the list will be ignored. Use the arrows on the bottom right of the dialog if you need to change the order.
    nested-styles-dialog-2

The best part of this approach is that styling applied with nested styles in a paragraph will remain intact even if you add or remove words in the paragraph. We added the word “everyone” to the last line, and the added text and the text after it was automatically formatted.

nested-style3

For more information about nested styles, see Adobe’s InDesign/Drop Caps and Nested Styles page.

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Posted by: Monica Murphy

Monica Murphy has worked in the publishing industry for over 30 years supporting publishing operations of various sizes. In her role as Technical Product Manager for Technology for Publishing, she shares her publishing application expertise supporting a broad range of publishing clients in InDesign best practices, cross-platform content workflows, and InDesign Template strategies. Her weekly tip and blog posts have a committed following in the InDesign community, and as a long-time participant in the InDesign pre-release community, she regularly analyzes and provides feedback for upcoming features. Monica manages the authoring and publication of Technology for Publishing’s handbooks on InDesign, InCopy, and other associated titles.