When applying a paragraph style in QuarkXPress, you can remove all local character formatting and Character styles by holding down the Option or Alt key when clicking on the paragraph style in the Style Sheets palette.

You can keep the local character formatting but remove local paragraph formatting by holding down Shift-Option or Shift-Alt instead. This is handy for removing manually applied leading, space before/after, indents, etc., without losing local character formatting.

In newer versions of QuarkXPress, you can also access these options (and many others!) by simply clicking on the double-square icon in the upper right corner of the Style Sheets palette. Here’s what you’ll see:

Jay Nelson

Jay Nelson is the editorial director of PlanetQuark.com, and the editor and publisher of Design Tools Monthly. He’s also the author of the QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7 training titles at Lynda.com, as well as the training videos Quark includes in the box with QuarkXPress 7 . In addition, Jay writes regularly for Macworld and Photoshop User magazines and speaks at industry events.