Paragraph/Character not working properly

Hi @Oderay26789584ky85:

I see your finished page—great work. There is some confusion on terminology that I'd like to address: a master page (or parent page) is used for repeating items like page numbers, headers and footers. I do not see any of those in your finished-page screen shot. 

To address the subsequent recipe pages, you will need to assign the sames styles that you created to the first page, as you saw in the second column of my animated gif. There is no magical shortcut to assign all those styles at one time. Alternatively, you can copy that page as it stands and change the content, but that's likely to take longer. 

~Barb

Hi @Oderay26789584ky85:

Are you hoping to assign paragraph styles to an entire page, and not one at a time or as a multi-line selection, the way I showed in the first video? There is a feature called Next Style that can assigned cascading styles to a range of text, but unfortunately it isn't going to get you where you want to go in this document, based on your screen shot. 

As for text moving to the next page, most keyboards have two Enter keys. In most applications, they do the same thing—they start a new paragraph. In InDesign the Enter key to the left starts a new paragraph, the one on the right adds a column break and pushes the text that follows it to the next column or page. Are you perhaps hitting the one on the right?

If not, there are keep options at play that are pushing the text to the next page automatically. 

~Barb

Hi Oderay:

I have to run—but let me leave with this video as way of showing visually you what I was saying in my first response. A paragraph is anything up to 1 hard return (the blue ¶s). The recipe as you have shared so far will need four paragraph styles: one for the title, one for the contributor, one for the ingredients and one for the instructions. 

It's possible that the file was provided to you with line breaks, so that the entire recipe is presenting as a single paragraph, and that is why I requested a screen shot with the hidden characters visible. If that is the case, remove the line breaks and add the paragraph breaks. 

I know that you are frustrated. Please remember that we are here to help.

~Barb

Hi @Oderay26789584ky85:

I am reading your posts carefully.

I think it would be very helpful if would post the exact same same screen shot you posted yesterday, but with the Hidden Characters Visible. Choose Type > Show Hidden Characters. 

~Barb

I wanted to use paragraph styles and character styles to format the document and not have to apply the same format manually. Isn't the styles supposed to do that?

Yes, but you still have to:

1. create the styles, and
2. assign the styles.

Once created and assigned, the benefit of using paragraphs styles are as follows:

1. 1-click to assign a paragraph style to an entire paragraph (i.e., the next and subsequent recipe titles)
2. uniform formatting across the document (i.e., all the recipe titles are formatted the exact same way because they rely on the defined paragraph style definition), and 
3. you can edit the style definition and all paragraphs using the style will update (i.e., change the recipe title style definition to blue, and it is up to InDesign—not us—to locate and update every single recipe title in the entire document.)

Again, you did not demonstrate a need for character styles in your screen shot. You might need them elsewhere, but not on the text you shared with us. 

You might find it helpful to stop and learn the basics of using styles before returning to the project. InDesign is a very complex application, and all of us need to spend time getting up to speed on the features we are using for the first time. It's not the type of application you can open up and teach yourself in a few hours. 

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/paragraph-character-styles.html

~Barb

Hi @Oderay26789584ky85:

In an English class, a paragraph is 3 to 5 sentences. On a computer, a paragraph is any text terminated with a hard return. (¶)

You posted your screenshot without showing us your hidden characters (Type > Show Hidden Characters), but I would have to assume (without seeing them) that the first two lines are two separate paragraphs. Each of the ingredients is its own paragraph. And the 1.) is the beginning of yet another paragraph. If not, they should be. It's possible there are line breaks but again, we can't tell unless you show us the hidden characters.

The document you are showing us will need four paragraph styles: one for the title, one for the contributor, one for the ingredients and one for the instructions. There is no need for any character styles—used to emphasize words within a paragraph—within your screen shot.

~Barb