Applying *only* Paragraph (not Character) attrs to a passage

[fastmiso]

Hi (and pardon me if I failed to find this in the past posts due to common search terms),

I often need to change a Paragraph Style after I have already changed the Character Styles within a passage. The application of the Paragraph Style resets the Character Style of the entire passage to the "Associated character style" of the Paragraph Style, overriding all Character Styles manually set on words/phrases. (Note that it does not reset the extant Variations of the Character Style if the "Associated character style" is the same in the newly applied Paragraph Style.

Is there any way to avoid this? That is, I only want to apply attributes of the Paragraph level, without removing extant overrides on the Character level.

In Pages, as I remember, a single-click on the Paragraph Style in the Drawer will apply *only* Paragraph attributes to selected passage, while a double-click of the Paragraph Style will apply both Para attrs and Char attrs to the passage. I liked that.

Have I missed something, or is this rather a feature request?

(I guess the workaround would be to collapse some of my Character Styles into Variations of a single Character Style...)

[petrus]

Have you tried editing the paragraph styles in your style sets, so that "None" is selected in the "Associated Character Style" dialogue box?

[fastmiso]

Right, thanks very much. That seems to work in all simple cases so far. (It somehow never occurs to me to be *less* controlling in Mellel.)

[ozean]

Is there a specific reason why you are using different character styles in one paragraph as opposed to only using character variations? (This is just out of personal interest, no offense intended – I have wondered if I might sooner or later be in a position where I would have to do that too. And I prefer to be prepared for such a situation. )

[fastmiso]

That's a fair question. I work in several languages (like most here), and don't like any single font for all, so I run out of variations for a given Character Style if I also have italic, underline and bold variations in the mix of fonts.

But, yes, I am coming around to just trying to consolidate them all into the variations A-H of single Character Style, hoping never to, say, underline any Sanskrit in a Body paragraph.