I don't want one row's style to infect the next
 

I've been using OO for years, and I'm still baffled by Styles.

I'm working on an outline, and wanted only one item - it's a level three item - to appear in bold. Now, when I hit enter and create another item immediately below it (whether level 3 or indented to level 4), it too appears as bold. I don't want that. I want all new items to appear as I have set their styles in the Utility Drawer.

I've tried this with Automatic Level Styles on and off, and it doesn't make a difference. The new level always inherits the attributes of the one preceding it. There HAS to be a way to do this: I just want new items to be created in the styles I've set for the entire document.

How do I do this? And why is OO the only application in the world whose Style approach I still cannot decipher?

When you apply a style to a row, and then create a new row immediately after it and start typing, you get the style of the previous row. If you're creating a new block of material, I think this is a better default for many, as opposed to having to style each new row. If you don't want this behavior, when you create the new row, immediately bring up the Style Attributes inspector and click on the (x) to clear the Selected row styling. Or maybe don't apply those "unusual" styles until you've created all of the rows, if you don't want to be interrupted while typing away...

Style a row and keep typing new rows at that point, and the style sticks. Not really that hard to understand, once you realize what the behavior is...

Thanks for the explanation. It still seems to me to be a counter-intuitive way to manage styles, but I really appreciate the quick reply.