I will aim my specific remarks at the Adobe Pagemaker 6.5 layout program because it is the most popular application with desktop users. However, all layout programs use style sheets, as do many other applications that utilize some text, such as Adobe Illustrator. You will find style sheet palettes in Quark Xpress, Corel Ventura and Microsoft Publisher. If you wish to utilize even a fraction of the potential of these publishing applications, you must achieve mastery of the style sheets.

The first step in efficient utilization of style sheets is to set the defaults. This action will save you a great deal of clicking later on. The object here is to set the defaults to the value that you are most likely to use in the future. The characteristics you specify will apply to all text between hard-return paragraphs, excluding the lead return and including the trailing return. A hard return is a line break, which the user creates by pressing the ENTER key. Usually, your program will allow you to create a "soft" return also, which creates a new paragraph, linked to the previous paragraph by sharing the same style "tag." The tag is the name you have given a certain set of paragraph, word and character specifications. A soft return is created in Pagemaker by holding the SHIFT key while pressing the ENTER key.

In order to set our style defaults, we must launch Pagemaker, and refrain from opening any files or documents. Instead, we will hold down the COMMAND (Mac) or CONTROL (Win) key while pressing the 3 key. The Define Styles dialog box will appear showing the default styles that ship with Pagemaker. Delete all of them to create your own style. Click OK, then open a new document: COMMAND or CONTROL + N.

Open the Define Styles dialog box again and click on the word "Selection" and click the "New" button. The Styles Options dialog box will present itself with a blinking cursor in the "name" field. Give your new style a name, or tag, that relates to its function so that you can recognize it quickly in the styles palette. The second field, "Based On:" allows you to create another style with the same characteristics, which you can then modify, and assign to a different tag. The third field is "Next Style," which determines what style will follow the one currently selected as you are keying in text and press the ENTER key. This feature allows you to switch between styles automatically. For instance, you might select the tag "body text" to follow the tag "headline."

Below the third field is a short summary of the characteristics of the style currently selected. On the right are four buttons corresponding to the four sets of characteristics you may assign to any given style tag. Click on the "Character" button and the familiar text dialog box appears. Here we will set the word characteristics of all text labeled with the current tag. You may select the font, the point size and the leading. Do not leave the leading on "Auto," which is Pagemaker's default. Such a mistake can lead to unpleasant surprises as text will reflow every time you change point size.

Normal leading is 120 percent of point size. Use this value unless you have a reason to want tighter or more spaced leading. At the bottom of this box, you will see a set of radio buttons for the various type styles. Windows users will select italic or bold or normal (Roman) text here. Mac users will use the normal setting and select bold or italic from the font menu.

In the upper right corner, just below the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons, click on the "Options... " button to bring up the "Character Options" dialog box. I normally keep these figures set at "70, 70, 25, 0, 0." Thus, small caps are 70% the height of large caps, superscript and subscript are 70 percent the size of full text, superscripts are raised 25 percent of point size from the baseline, subscripts are written on the baseline, and there is zero baseline shift (the movement of individual letters or groups of letters higher or lower than normal).

The super- and subscript specifications allow you to make elegant fractions "on the fly." Using keyboard shortcuts, enable superscript, type the numerator, disable superscript, press CONTROL + ALT + / (Win) or SHIFT + OPTION + 1 (Mac) to key in a non-breaking forward slash so your fraction doesn't divide itself. Then enable subscript, type your denominator, disable subscript and continue typing your text. After a few repetitions, the action will come easily, allowing you to make professional-looking fractions.

Now we can proceed to the Paragraph Specifications. The remaining Character Specifications we may discuss in another column. The Paragraph Specifications dialog box allows you to set left indent, right indent and first line indent. In addition, here is where you create hanging indents, such as utilized in bulleted lists, by setting a left indent, then a first line indent that is a negative value equal to the left indent. Then, when we set our tabs, you will create a left-aligned tab equal to the left indent. The second set of fields allow you to specify space before and space after a paragraph. Remember that a paragraph is that block of text between two hard returns, ENTER, including the following hard return. Use the space before and space after fields instead of "double spacing" between paragraphs or after headings. Below the indent fields you will find the justification control. "Left" will give your text a ragged right edge, "Right" will give your text a ragged left edge, "Justify" will assure that both edges are smooth, while "Center" will display a ragged left and a ragged right. "Force Justify" is particularly useful for single lines of display text, to assure a flush left and a flush right.

The final set of fields at the bottom of the Paragraph Specifications dialog box are concerned with keeping lines of text from separating when they should be staying together. You really don't wish to have the first line of a new paragraph appear at the bottom of the last column of a page and the remainder of the paragraph at the top of the first column on the next page. Turning on "Widow Control " will prevent this from occurring, while "Orphan Control" will prevent the same from happening with the last line of the paragraph.

Below the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons is a button labeled "Rules." Pressing this button brings up another dialog box that allows you to specify a rule before or after your paragraph. This powerful and flexible Pagemaker tool has so many useful features that I must reserve in-depth discussion for another column. Similarly, the final button in the Paragraph Specifications dialog box is labeled "Spacing" and the associated dialog box allows you, the user, to precisely control word and character spacing for your paragraph, among other things. I encourage you to experiment with these settings and consult your documentation to learn more about the subtleties of these controls. Space constraints forbid me from giving these features the treatment which they deserve.

The third button in the Style Options dialog box concerns Tabs. The Pagemaker default is a left-aligned tab every one-half inch. This is almost never suitable for anything you will ever do. Use this powerful feature to set your tabs properly, rather than just living with the defaults. Besides left-aligned, Pagemaker offers right-aligned, center-aligned and decimal-aligned, particularly useful when dealing with dollars and cents. In addition, any of these tabs may be set to repeat at given intervals and may be assigned a leader of dots, dashes, underlines or custom characters of any kind.

The final button in the Style Options dialog box is Hyphenation. For letters or other documents with wide columns, it is useful to turn hyphenation off. For more narrow columns, you may specify the "hyphenation zone" in inches. This tells Pagemaker how close to the right margin a given word must appear before it can be considered eligible for hyphenation. The exact hyphenation parameters are set up on a word-by-word basis in PageMaker's English dictionary, which can be edited by the user.

Pagemaker's Style Options feature, properly used, allows the user, after making careful measurements, to simply type up complex business forms in one piece. A single text block may contain all the rules, lines, heads and boxes required for an invoice, prescription pad, or inventory sheet. Furthermore, when it becomes time to change the form, it is easily edited.