Instead of manually applying a paragraph style to each paragraph via Word’s menus or style list, you can use the eXtyles Style Paragraphs function to apply a set of styles from your template’s paragraph styles to the document. The efficient style palette used in eXtyles lets you quickly and easily apply the correct styles to each individual paragraph. Each of your organization’s paragraph styles is mapped to the eXtyles style palette, where it appears as a button. You can quickly traverse the document and confirm or change the style of each paragraph using the convenient “Undo,” “Next,” and “Previous” buttons.

How to use Style Paragraphs

To style the paragraphs of the document:

1. Select Style Paragraphs from the eXtyles menu. Styles in the eXtyles style palette are divided into multiple groups, which may be customized to fit your organization’s styles. The tabs on a style palette in eXtyles might includes the following:

   • Front: covering front matter paragraphs 

   • Body: covering paragraphs in the body of the document

   • List: covering list items

   • Object: covering boxes, tables, and figures

   • Back: covering back matter paragraphs

     Tip
     Common paragraph styles and their use can be found in the eXtyles JATS Style Guide.

     
     

2. When the style palette appears, select the desired tab and begin traversing the document, clicking the desired button to apply a style to the selected paragraph, or clicking “Next” to advance to the next paragraph without changing the style of the selected paragraph.

   The selected paragraph is highlighted in its entirety. After you click a style button to apply a style to paragraph, the highlight advances automatically to the next paragraph.

   You can also press the designated hot key—indicated by an underscored letter or number in the button’s label—rather than clicking with the mouse. For example, you can press the “x” key on the keyboard instead of clicking “Next.”

   Tip
   title Skip to next unique paragraph
   Hold Shift+X to skip all paragraphs tagged with the current paragraph’s style, stopping at the next new paragraph style.

   
   

Use the following buttons at the bottom of the style palette to traverse the document:

Within the style palette, you can use the Tab and Shift+Tab keys on the keyboard to switch between the different style tabs on the palette. The Esc key will close the palette.

Also, within the palette the Shift key will change the behavior of certain functions. For example, if you hold Shift while clicking “Next” or typing the hotkey “X,” eXtyles will skip all paragraphs tagged with the current paragraph’s style, stopping at the next new paragraph style. If you hold Shift while clicking the table body style for your configuration, eXtyles will apply the table body style to the rest of the table.

The style palette closes automatically after the document is completely styled. If you need to close the palette in the middle of processing, click the X box in the upper-right corner, or press Esc. You can reopen the palette at any time, and styling will continue with the paragraph where the cursor is currently located.

After you style a document, you can easily navigate through it by jumping from heading to heading using Word’s Document Map feature. To use Word’s Document Map feature, check the box in View > Navigation Pane.

Styling by hand

You can also use the Word paragraph style menu as usual if you are applying a paragraph style to just a few paragraphs. If you use this method, please keep these points in mind:

• The name on the eXtyles Paragraph Style palette is not necessarily the same as the name of the actual Word style. Be sure to use the correct Word paragraph style.

• Word has a bug (Microsoft calls it a “feature”) in which italic or bold markup or Symbol font changes in the middle of a paragraph may be lost when styles are applied from the Word Paragraph Style menu or ribbon. This problem is especially nasty in genetics papers, in which a gene may inadvertently be turned into a protein as a result. If you use this method of styling, be sure to proof the paragraph carefully. Using the eXtyles style palette avoids this bug in Word.