Formats are collections of typographical attributes and paragraph, character and hidden styles.

A format contains a set of typographical attributes and links to up to eight libraries of styles with at least one or more paragraph and character, or hidden styles. A format also contains optional filtering defaults that enable/disable it for the specific article element type or frame height. Moreover a format contains links to the default paragraph and text fitting strategies.

A format is automatically assigned to a new created article element. An article element cannot be without a format.

Every title (publication) has separate list of formats, but all sections of one title use the same list of formats.

Formatting plain text

The format defines formatting attributes for plain text and for text where you applied styles. For example, if the format "A" defaults sets Times 9pt typeface on 12pt leading, ragged right, as soon as you apply it on a text, its plain parts are formatted in Times 9pt typeface on 12pt leading, ragged right. If you switch to format "B" defaults use Helvetica 10pt typeface on 11pt leading, justified, the plain parts of text are reformatted in Helvetica 10pt typeface on 11pt leading, justified.

Formatting styled text

The format also defines list and content of styles (actually, they are defined on the level of style libraries, linked to the format). This provides a quick reformatting of the styled text too. If the format "A" contains a style "head", that is Times 40pt, boldface, centred, and then you switch to the format "B", that contains a style with the same name "head", but it is Helvetica 60pt regular left aligned, the headline formatted by the style head is automatically reformatted accordingly.

That is possible because the style names and not the style content are embedded in a text in GN4. These names "read" the formatting attributes from the format.

Formats and layout adjustments

When applying formatting on headlines, subheads, intros and pull quotes, you can opt for automatic layout adjustments, i.e. to scale the frame according to the formatting applied, and to scale/move other frames of the same article to adjust to the changed dimensions of the formatted frame.

See also

Apply a format on text content

Remove a format from text content

And also

About styles and formats