Clearing Style Overrides

When you apply local formatting or character styles, you have several different ways to clear those style overrides.

You can use the Clear Overrides button to clear the overrides in a text selection.

To clear the local formatting in a text selection:

1.	Select the text you want to clear.
2.	Click the Clear Overrides button in the Paragraph Styles palette . This changes the local formatting in the selection to the underlying paragraph style. The Clear Overrides button lets you remove local formatting applied to text.

You may find that you want to clear just the character attributes that were applied as local formatting, but you want to keep any paragraph attributes.

To clear only local character formatting in a text selection:

1.	Select the text you want to clear.
2.	Hold Cmd/Ctrl and click the Clear Overrides button. This changes the local character formatting in the selection to the underlying paragraph style.

A Summary for Clearing Overrides

To do this:	Do this:
Clear all the local formatting in a selection	Click the Clear Overrides button
Clear the local character formatting in a selection	Hold Cmd/Ctrl and click the Clear Overrides button
Clear the local paragraph formatting in a selection	Hold Cmd/Ctrl-Shift and click the Clear Overrides button
Clear all the local formatting applied to a paragraph	Hold Opt/Alt and click the name of the paragraph style
Clear all the local formatting and the character styles applied to a paragraph	Hold Opt/Alt-Shift and click the name of the paragraph style

The opposite to the previous exercise allows you to clear just the paragraph attributes that were applied as local formatting, but keep any character attributes.

To clear only local paragraph formatting in a text selection:

1.	Select the text you want to clear.
2.	Hold Cmd/Ctrl-Shift and click the Clear Overrides button. This changes the local paragraph formatting in the selection to the underlying paragraph style.

You can also remove all local formatting without making a specific text selection.

To override local formatting:

1.	Place your insertion point in the paragraph you want to override.
2.	Hold the Opt/Alt key as you click the name of the paragraph style . Opt/Alt-click a paragraph style name to remove any local formatting applied to text.

You may want to clear the characters styles and local formatting applied to the text.

To override character styles and local formatting:

1.	Place your insertion point in the paragraph you want to override.
2.	Hold the Opt/Alt and Shift keys as you click the name of the paragraph style. This deletes both the character styles and the local formatting applied to the text . Press Opt/Alt-Shift and click a paragraph style name to remove character styles and local formatting.

To break the link to a style:

1.	Place your insertion point in the paragraph you want to override.
2.	Choose Break Link to Style from the Paragraph Styles or Character Styles palette. This removes the style from the text, but does not change the formatting.

A Totally Style-Driven Workflow?

I use styles religiously. Everything in my book has a style applied to it. There is no text that has local formatting applied to it. So I never see a plus sign in my Paragraph Styles palette.

However, most of my students are not quite as strict as I am. They use paragraph and character styles for almost all their text. The one exception is the tracking they apply to text to avoid single words hanging around at the end of a paragraph.

This type of local formatting isn't really so bad especially since you can easily override it.