Why doesn't changing a paragraph style change all paragraphs

English
#1

My entire document uses the default paragraph style. I want to change the font size of all paragraphs but when I edit the default paragraph style and change the font it only changes up to a point and then stops. What have I don’t wrong? In the uploaded sample I changed the font from 12 to 10 but as you can see it only changed the font up to near the end of the second paragraph. Should this work? What have I done wrong?

Paragraph font issue sample.odt (30.9 KB)

Thanks.

#2

What have I done wrong?

Probably either

  • directly formatted
  • used another paragraph style sheet
  • used character styles.

I’ll have a look at the document (maybe someone else).

#4

There are direct (manual) formatting properties in your sample document. The Direct formatting always will owerwrite the properties of the applied styles.

Try the Ctrl-A, Ctrl-M. This command will delete all of the direct formatting properties.
Use some different Paragraph styles for the “chapter title lines”.

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#3

Select all the text and choose Format>Delete Direct Formatting.

Use the “Heading” paragraph styles for the headings.

76542 HB Paragraph font issue sample.odt (30,2 KB)

And it’s better to leave the paragraph style “Default” and use “Body Text” instead.

Don’t use direct formatting at all, it’s meant for Word users switching to LibreOffice without a learning curve.

How to use styles:

Professional text composition with Writer

English documentation

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#5

Your suggestions work just fine except for two things.

  1. Ctrl+A and Ctrl+M doesn’t work. I have to clear the direct formatting on individually selected text. What am I doing wrong?
  2. I set up a new style ‘New Sutra Line’ and you can see it from attached screen shot. However, even though the style says the font is Sanskrit Text, it is actually Mangal. What did I do wrong?
    Screen shot of New Sutra Line style problem.odt (202.7 KB)
#6

Your attached file is just another variant of a screenshot. We can check nothing. Attach the real file or a reduced version of it.

#7

Sanskrit text issue.odt (71.5 KB)

Here’s the Sanskrit text issue. I can’t seem to find a sample of the Clear Direct Formatting issue right now. If I find that I’ll start a new topic for it.

Thanks for your help.

#8

Don’t select the table of contents. So click at the start of the document, and Shift+click at the line before the table of contents, then press Ctrl+M. Do the same with the second part of the document.

#9

Your document is still a horrible mess of styles and direct formatting. With the exceptions of paragraphs in My Text Body and a few headings, you have nearly systematically direct formatting. Take the example of your cover page. In addition, vertical spacing is done with empty paragraphs which is another insidious direct formatting leading to huge difficulties in layout (in particular bad synchronisation with intended page flow).

You’ll have to fix this issue otherwise you’ll never succeed in finalising your book.

Now, let’s tackle your “mysterious” font issue.

You’ve embarked in writing a multi-lingual document. It is already difficult when Western languages using only the Latin alphabet are involved. However, rules about character sequences are quite simple. In your case, you mix English and Sanskrit which is managed through the Hindi script. As far as I know, in Hindi, letters when assembled to form a word may be permuted to be displayed. You need to tell Writer you’ll use such a script so that the Hindi module can be activated.

You do this in Tools>Options, Language Settings>Languages where you enable Complex Text Layout and select Hindi.

When this is done, you can modify your New Sutra Line paragraph style Font tab. You’ll discover that you now have two independent configurations, one for Western text, one for complex text layout. By default apparently, Mangal was set for CTL while you had set Sanskrit Text for Western.

Miscellaneous remarks:

  • Writer has very powerful features to automatically number paragraphs (lists or chapter numbering). Use them instead of manually numbering your headings.
  • You can use Heading n even for headings written in Sanskrit. All you have to do is customize them after enabling CTL.
  • Your book will be ~200 pages long. For your own serenity, learn to use styles and only styles exclusive of direct formatting otherwise tuning your book layout will be a nightmare. Read carefully the Writer Guide. It is imperfect, it is no tutorial but it exists. It will give you an introduction and I recommend you do homework on small examples to understand how styles work and what effects result from them. Only afterwards come back to your book. This is not wasted time. You are in a very complex document.
#10

Thank you so much for the Complex Text Layout information!!! It works perfectly. Sanskrit showed up along with Hindi, so I’m using that.

While I was waiting for your response I started fixing up the document after the TOC to just use styles: I’m about 25% done. I had only used MS Word before and was not aware of styles. Now that I know about them I love them. I see that they are extremely powerful.

Thanks so very much for your help!!!

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