Bullet size and bold text

[Fred Ridder]

Tim Pann wrote:
 

> In a bullet list, if I apply a boldface character format to all of the
> text in a given paragraph, the bullet for that paragraph is also bold,
> so it's larger. I don't want that to happen. Currently I use a
> workaround, where I type the paragraph with a trailing space character
> at the end, and make all but the trailing space character bold. This
> prevents the bullet from being bold.
> 
> This seems like a clunky and unnecessary workaround. Who of us wants an
> errant space character hanging out at the end of a paragraph?
> 
> I have tried specifically selecting just the text and not selecting the
> pilcrow. Doesn't matter.

For better or for worse, this is the way FrameMaker has always worked and I doubt very much that Adobe will change this behavior at this late date (although I have said that before about features that they did, in fact, "fix" so that automated processes based on the historical behavior broke...).
 
Basically, if there is any kind of character formatting (either a character tag or manually applied formatting) applied to the character that immediately precedes the pilcrow, the pilcrow takes on that same formatting. This occurs whether the formatting is applied to only one character or every character in the paragraph. But if all the characters in the paragraph have the same character formatting applied, the formatting will become a *paragraph override*, so that the default paragraph font format itself is modified, at which point any autonumbering characters that are set to the default paragraph font also assume the formatting. 
 
So how to avoid this behavior?
 
You've already discovered the simple solution: Insert an unformatted space before the pilcrow. You seem to see this as some kind of evil, but I don't understand the basis for your characterization of this as an "errant" space. It has absolutely no effect on the appearance of the document except for the effect you need it to produce (keeping the default appearance of the bullet desipte having applied an override character format to the whole paragraph).
 
The other approach is to define your autonumber (bullet) formats so that they specify a particular named character format that corresponds to the bullet appearance you want. The template set I currently use has character tags called zBulletLarge, zBulletMedium, zBulletMiniscule (sic), and zBulletTiny that only get used in the autonumbering that is defined for the various bulleted styles (the "z" prefix puts them at the bottom of the format listing so that they are less likely to be used directly by writers). Once those defined formats are part of the bullet characteristics, it simply does not matter what overrides you apply to the paragraph formatting because the bullet is disconnected from the default paragraph font.
 
-Fred Ridder 		 	   		  
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