Keep settings persistent on cursor position change

  1. I set the font color to red.
  2. I change the cursor position.
  3. The font color is back to black.

How can I make this persistent so that on cursor change the font color setting (and other settings as well) remain the same?

Use styles and not direct formatting. Selecting a font color by using T like color icon in the format toolbar is “direct formatting” and the text color reverts to the setting of the current paragraph style’s color if you change the cursor position. No deal to change that behavior.

To be more precise than @anon73440385’s comment, when you move the cursor somewhere, the attributes of the text you’ll be typing are those in effect immediately at left of cursor (resulting from paragraph style, overridden by character style, overridden by direct formatting). This allows to extend a sequence consistently without bothering for which format was applied. This is what most users expect.

Learn to work with styles, this will make your life much easier.

Could you please tell me how can I use styles to select something where the font color won’t change when I change the cursor pos. Must I create a custom style with red font color and select it?

Let me explain what I am willing to do. There is a big document. I would like to add red text as comments (like teacher proofreading student’s work) whenever I think it is necessary in the document. I would like to keep the styles when I change the cursor pos but always have the red font color.

Maybe menu Edit - Track Changes?

Using an answer but htis may not be what you expect.

From your purpose in your comment, I understand you are proof-reading a document and want to “annotate” it.

You have several possibilities:

  • use Edit>Tack Changes>Record

    This keeps a history of the changes made. The screen takes a weird look if you are not accustomed to it. Colours and strike-through are used to show additions and deletions. These “funny” formatting are only changes clues and do not transform in any way your text. Use View>Track Changes to alternate between “reader” and “editor” view.

    This works only when making changes.

  • create a character stylewith a highlight colour

    Select this character style in the style sidepane and swipe your mouse over text to be highlighted. You need to reselect the character style before every swipe.

    Note that this erases any previously applied character style, so this may not be what you want.

  • Insert>Comment

    This is probably the best trade-off: comments do not alter in any way document formatting. You can add remarks, reminders, notes, … displayed aside the text with a dotted line linking the comment with the location in text.

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