On 10/12/2020 18:33, Brian Barker wrote:
At 21:05 10/12/2020 +1000, Jean Lear wrote:
I knew there were Hard Returns and Soft Returns but never consciously
used them. I now have to understand which, when and where to use them
as I add items to the Newsletter.
The terms "hard return" and "soft return" are probably unhelpful.
Indeed, Wikipedia explains a "soft return" as the line break that
occurs as text flows naturally from line to line. These will move
about in the text as fonts are changed (or substituted) or paper sizes
or margins change (or the text is modified), so they do not exist
within the word processor document and you cannot "use" them, as you
claim. The useful distinction - and one that will help you understand
your problem - is between line breaks and paragraph breaks (both of
which are varieties of "hard return").
The definition from PC Magazine
What is the difference between a hard and soft return in Word?
*Hard return*: Pressing the *Enter* key in *Word* ends a paragraph. It's
officially known as typing a *hard return*. ... The *soft return*, or
*line break*, is used primarily in titles and headings; when you have a
long title and need to split it up *between* two lines, you press
Shift+*Enter* to insert the *soft return*.
I do not know how I have managed to format the Newsletter for the
last several months without encountering the problem that started
this week.
Luck, rather than judgement.
"... the appearance of the relevant parts of the text changes or are
you actually looking at the applied paragraph style name?"
The appearance of the text actually changes along with the style name
Er, yes - well, of course it does: that's the idea! But the question
was whether you were detecting the apparent change of paragraph style
by looking at the style name or *just* by observing the appearance of
the text. In the former (and more probable) case, it must be that you
had changed the paragraph style applied to some text, but in the
latter you may instead have changed the properties of the existing
paragraph style.
Incidentally, there was one point that I forgot to mention. You said
"When that body text is highlighted and changed back to Body Text
...", which suggests that you think the change is applied to the
selected text. But no: "Text body" is a *paragraph* style (not a
character style), so any such application is to the entire paragraph
containing the current cursor position or to all paragraphs (possibly
only partially) included in the selection. Don't select anything: just
put the cursor somewhere in the required paragraph. Understanding that
will help you see what is happening.
Brian Barker
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@openoffice.apache.org
