In the Style dialog, select Default Paragraph Font and base your character
style on that.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
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"Brian_M" wrote in message
...
I'd like to have a character style in Word 2003 that preserves the size of
the underlying paragraph style, so that I can apply it to whatever
paragraph
style I want and just get the font and emphasis changes. Eg change from
whatever underlying paragraph font & style to Arial Italic, without
changing
the size.