Recommended character styles

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Character styles format single words or phrases. They determine the used typeface and color.

Professional authoring tools also allow you to control automatic hyphenation and line breaks in the word or phrase to which a particular character style has been applied.

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General recommendations

When setting up character styles:

Create as few character styles as possible. Users aren’t able to distinguish among more than 3 or 4 distinct visual styles (see also Use clear and simple design).

Create styles only for tagging particular types of information (see Create styles semantically).

When possible, define styles that adhere to general conventions so that readers don’t have to learn a new meaning of a known style. For example, it’s most common to use:

bold font style for controls

underlined text for hyperlinks

italic font style for special terms and for emphasis

When applying character styles:

Don’t include surrounding spaces and punctuation.

Don’t use character styles in headings and subheadings.

Overview of recommended styles

The basic character styles needed for every user assistance document are:

Purpose

Suggested style name

Suggested keyboard shortcut

To highlight the name of the documented product and to disable automatic hyphenation for the product name (optional).

For details, see:
Product name character style

cp_product

[Ctrl]+[Shift]+[p]

To highlight all user interface and interaction elements, such as window titles, menu items, buttons, keys, levers, and so on.

For details, see:
Element character style

ce_element

[Ctrl]+[Shift]+[e]

To mark parameters, such as parameters of function calls, formulas, and so on.

For details, see:
Parameter character style

ca_parameter

[Ctrl]+[Shift]+[a]

To mark product-specific technical terms.

For details, see:
Term character style

ct_term

[Ctrl]+[Shift]+[t]

To emphasize words and expressions if this is necessary to avoid confusion.

For details, see:
Emphasis character style

cm_emphasis

[Ctrl]+[Shift]+[m]

To highlight important keywords that help readers to skim the text (optional).

For details, see:
Strong character style

cs_strong

[Ctrl]+[Shift]+[s]

To mark input that users must type.

For details, see:
User input character style

ci_input

[Ctrl]+[Shift]+[i]

To mark quotes of source code and configuration files.

For details, see:
Code character style

cc_code

[Ctrl]+[Shift]+[c]

To mark links / cross-references to other topics within the document as well as links to external web sites and documents.

For details, see:
Link character styles

cl_link

[Ctrl]+[Shift]+[l]


Automate line breaks and page breaks

Create styles semantically

Create styles hierarchically

Use color with care

Think ahead about printing

Choosing fonts and spacing