Character Style Creation in Adobe CS5 Illustrator
In Adobe Creative Suite 5 (Adobe CS5) Illustrator you create a character style when you want individual sections of text to be treated differently from other text in the paragraph.
Set up text with the text attributes you want included in the character style in the Character and Paragraph panels and then choose Window→Type→Character Styles.
The Character Styles panel opens.
Select the text from Step 1.
Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac) the New Style button (the dog-eared page icon) at the bottom of the Character Styles panel.
In the Character Styles Options dialog box that appears, name your style and click OK.
Illustrator records which attributes have been applied already to the selected text and builds a style from them.
Create a new text area.
First choose Select→Deselect. Hold down the Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac) key, and click anywhere on the artboard outside of the active text area. By clicking, you deactivate the current text box so that you can click and drag out a new text area.
Change the font and size to dramatically different choices from your saved style.
Type some text into the new text area.
Select some (not all) of the new text.
Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac) the style name in the Character Styles panel. The Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac) will eliminate any attributes that weren’t part of the saved style. The attributes of the saved character style are applied to the selected text.
When you create a new panel item (any panel) in Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, or Photoshop, we recommend that you get in the habit of Alt-clicking (Windows) or Option-clicking (Mac) the New Style button. This habit allows you to name the item (style, layer, or swatch, for example) while adding it to the panel.