If a change to the type size of a sub-heading is required, for example, then that style is edited in the style sheet and the change will then "cascade" down throughout the entire document and update all sub-headings formatted with that style.
A style sheet consists of one or more styles. Therefore ... a style sheet is a collection of styles.
What programs use style sheets?
In general, all multi-page document creation applications will use style sheets, such as ...
- Word (word processing)
- AppleWorks & Pages (word processing)
- QuarkXpress (page layout for graphic designers)
- Adobe InDesign (page layout for graphic designers)
- Dreamweaver (web site design)
- Adobe GoLive! (web site design)
What is a style?
A style sheet will consist of one or more styles. Typically, each style will contain a number of attributes which together will define the appearence of one or more of the following ...
- Character styling (the letters themselves)
- Paragraph styling (line spacing, indentations, kerning etc)
- Positioning
- Box shapes, borders and backgrounds
Therefore .... a style is a collection of attributes.
What is a property (attribute)?
Each style will comprise a series of "properties" such as ...
- Typeface family (eg Arial)
- Typeface/font (eg Arial regular)
- Typeface styling (eg Italic)
- Type size (eg 10pt)
- Type colour (eg black)
- Background colour
- Leading/line spacing (eg 12pt or double line)
- Indentation
- Position
- Border
- etc
Here is an example style (a sub-heading, h5) used on this web site ...
h5 { font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; color: #CCCCCC}
Read about the stylesheet format for web sites, CSS, here.