default paragraph font vs. underlying properties

Either John is mistaken or you've misinterpreted him, since the Default Paragraph Font is the default font for a given style (not the document default). This means that if you create a character style whose only attribute is red color and apply it to a Normal paragraph in which the font is TNR 12 (with Automatic color), it will still be TNR 12 but red. If you apply the same character style to a heading that is Arial 16 (and Automatic), it will still be Arial 16 but red.

If a character style is based on "underlying properties" of selected text (including those applied as direct formatting), then it could conceivably apply Bold even though neither the style of the original paragraph on which it was based nor the style of the text to which it is applied includes Bold.

For what it is worth, this is what I see in the styles.xml file for my test document where I created one character styles based on "underlying properties" and another based on "default paragraph font."

Suzanne, Charles, thank you. I have removed the part about direct formatting.

I don't think that any character style can preserve direct formatting applied to text. On the contrary, the character style removes the direct font formatting as you apply the style.

I guess I find this fascinating. I am not seeing any difference between the two in Word 2010.

Here is a screenshot. I created two paragraph styles, one with bold and one with Italics. I then created two character styles, a red one based on Default Paragraph Font and a Blue one based on Underlying Properties. Both had Bold and Italics as attributes.

I formatted two paragraphs of text with the two paragraph styles. Then I added direct formatting of Italics to the Bold paragraph and of Bold to the Italics paragraph (parts). Then I applied both character styles in each of the directly formatted areas of these. The results were the same. The character style toggled the attribute that was in the paragraph style but not the direct formatting.


If in the first paragraph I selected a word in Bold+Italics and pressed Ctrl+Spacebar, the Bold formatting was toggled but not the Italics. Again, the Italics are a part of the paragraph style in that paragraph. In paragraph 2, Ctrl+Spacebar does the opposite, toggling the Italic formatting, but not the Bold which is part of the paragraph Style.

So, at least in this Word 2010 experiment, they act the same.


So far, I have not been so fascinated that I've tried examining the XML. I did save my sample document so if a fit takes me, I can.

One difference is that "Underlying Properties" does not show up in the Styles Pane AFAIK, "Default Paragraph Font" can.

Credit goes to MVP John McGhie for his explanation, which I'm trying to repeat here in a simplified form...

As I understand it, "default paragraph font" means that the character style inherits properties from the document defaults (these can be customized on the Set Defaults tab of the Manage Styles dialog box in Word 2007 and later versions of Word).

"Underlying properties" means that formatting is inherited from the character formatting of the underlying paragraph style.

Edit: Experiments do not support that direct formatting can be preserved, so I removed that statement from my last paragraph.