Hi Larry,

While you're typing, when you come to the end of the text you want formatted
in the character style, press Ctrl+spacebar to return to the paragraph
style. It invokes the ResetChar command, which removes any character style
or direct formatting that exists at the insertion point.

In versions of Word up to 2000, the Format Style command opened the Style
dialog, in which you could choose a sort-of-character-style named "Default
Paragraph Font" from the list. That represents the absence of any character
style or direct formatting, so applying it is equivalent to the ResetChar
command.

In Word 2002/2003 the Format Style command opens the Styles and Formatting
task pane, which for some reason doesn't contain the "Default Paragraph
Font" entry. If you want the old dialog, you can open the Tools Customize
dialog, select the Format category, and locate the entry "Style..." about
3/4 of the way down the list. Drag that entry to a toolbar or menu.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

Larry Root wrote:
What I'd like to be able to do is apply a character style as I type
the text rather than having to stop, select the text to be styled,
apply the character style, relocate to the end of the text, and
continue. This is straight forward using direct formatting, but I
cannot get it to work using styles.

If I enter text in a paragraph style and then go back and apply a
character style to the text that I've already entered, I get what I
expect and want: text with that style within a block of paragraph
styled text.

If I enter text in a paragraph style, then select a character style
to apply to text as I enter it, and then try to return to the
paragraph style, Word seems to reasign the character style into the
paragraph style: Subsequent text, and even subsequest paragraphs,
stay in the applied character style.

How do I "turn off" a character style so I can continue in the
selected paragraph style?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Very Respectfully,
Larry