The Complete Manual of Typography: A Guide to Setting Perfect Type, Second Edition

chapter 17 Typesetting with Style Sheets

Typesetting systems have always relied on shortcuts: combinations of type-

setting instructions concatenated into a single command. Current software

achieves much the same effect—and similar time savings—through style

sheets, which define the appearance and behavior of type at the paragraph

or character level. (Another big time-saver on dedicated typesetting systems

was a keyboard that had plenty of extra keys to which you could assign various

shortcuts. For that, we’re still waiting.) Today’s programs often prefer the

simple term styles for these shortcuts, but to avoid confusion with the many

other mea ...