Style sheet (desktop publishing)

A style sheet is a feature in desktop publishing programs that store and apply formatting to text. Style sheets are a form of separation of presentation and content: it creates a separate abstraction to keep the presentation isolated from the text data.

Style sheets are a common feature in most popular desktop publishing and word processing programs, including Corel Ventura, Adobe InDesign, Scribus, PageMaker, QuarkXPress, WordPerfect, and Microsoft Word, though they may be referred to using slightly different terminology.

Individual styles are created by the user and may include a wide variety of commands that dictate how a selected portion of text is formatted:

In most programs with style sheets, there is a window or menu listing the style sheets the user has associated with the document. For example, a newspaper may have a style sheet for its story text called "Body copy" that sets the type at 10 point Nimrod with 11 point leading and justified alignment.

Most programs allow users to name their own styles. Usually easy-to-remember names are used that describe what the style is used for. Common names might include "headline," "subhead" and "byline."

To apply a style to a portion of text, most programs allow users to select the text with their mouse and then click on the desired style in a style panel.

Style sheets help publications maintain consistency, so common elements such as story text, [[headlines]] and [[byline]]s always appear the same. Style sheets also help save time allowing a designer to click once rather than having to apply each element one at a time and risk using an incorrect value.

Finally, style sheets are also useful if a publication decides to make changes to a design - say, make the story text slightly smaller. A user with proper administrative access can make the change to the master style sheet and then "send" the revised style sheets to all users, so the change is automatically reflected.

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