Bullet and Numbering colour

[Fozzie Foster]

Hey team, 

I want my bullets (in my paragraph stlye) to inherit the stying attributes (in this case colour) from the character style that I am using to colour the entire paragraph. This is appose to creating a new character style for the bullet. 

So as an example, I have a P-style called body and 2 C-styles called blue and magenta. This lets me keep the paragraph style the same but alter the colour. However it seems overly labourious to create C-styles just for the bullets so they match. 

Any ideas? 

[Fozzie Foster]

Just to clarify…this is without converting bullets to text which seems slightly destructive unless I'm missing something

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

InDesign uses Character Styles to define bullet characteristics when it's desired to have them different from the 'body' text. There is no alternative, at least nothing particularly simple.

Paragraph and Character Styles are how InDesign work. Mastering them is not some time-wasting side task.

[Fozzie Foster]

Thanks for the reply James!

[Barb Binder]

Hi @Fozzie Foster:

Can we start with this sentence?

I want my bullets (in my paragraph stlye) to inherit the stying attributes (in this case colour) from the character style that I am using to colour the entire paragraph.

By @Fozzie Foster

A paragraph style is used to style a paragraph. A character style is used to differentiate a string of text within a paragraph. There are exceptions to every rule—in InDesign as in life—but as a general rule, we never apply a character style to an entire paragraph.

As you can see in my demo below, if I change the paragraph style color, the entire paragraph turns blue, including the bullets.  I use a character style to highlight something important within the paragraph, to differentiate it from the rest of the paragraph. 

Oh, and you are correct. No need to convert bullets to text. 

~Barb

[Fozzie Foster]

Thanks Barb!

This is interesting to me that you wouldn't use a character style to differentiate colour? I often do if I want everything to be the same except for the colour. I would then use nested styles or GREP styles for strings of text.

So in this instance you would just make multiple paragraph styles? 

[Barb Binder]

A nested style or GREP style represent two additional ways to assign a character style to part of a paragraph (beyond highlighting text and clicking it as I showed in the video).

I normally use color to help people understand styles (I'm a career InDesign trainer) but maybe it was a bad choice in this particular situation. LOL 

Here's what is important:

1. Define everything for the entire paragraph in the paragraph style. So many categories, including color.
   
   
   
2. Then you only need a character style for the words within the paragraph that need look different from the rest of the fully formatted paragraph. How do you assign that character style doesn't matter – highlight and click, GREP style, or Nested style.

Again the rule is, we do not assign a character style to an entire paragraph. That's when things start going south, quickly.  In your case with the bullets, the bullets pick up the formatting of the first character of the paragraph style. That's why you are here, asking about it. See the difference between assigning color through the paragraph style vs a character style?

~Barb

[Barb Binder]

Oh, I missed your last question!

We create one paragraph style for each type of paragraph. For example, one paragraph style for the bullets, one for the body paragraphs, one for the titles, one for the subtitles, etc.

In both demos, all of my bullets are using one paragraph style called Bullets. 

~Barb

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

To perhaps bring this back to some order, I think one form of the answer might be that —

• Bullets (and numbers) follow the list item's Paragraph Style, unless
• A Character Style is defined and applied to the bullet/number definition, but
• Neither that Character Style nor one applied to the list text/paragraph as a whole can be made to apply to the other; they are separately managed elements.
• I'm pretty sure that no combination of Line or GREP styles can be made to automatically apply the same Character Style to both elements. (Via scripting, sure.)

[Fozzie Foster]

Yes I totally do! Thanks Barb 🙂



Kia pai tō rā


Jordan (Fozzie) Foster

Senior Academic Staff Member

<Personal info removed by MOD>

[Barb Binder]

Great! Come back and see us if you have more questions. And you have a good day, too!

~Barb