Expert: Roy Wilhelm - 10/18/2010

Question
what is the difference between 'normal' and 'basic paragraph' styles?

Answer
Hi Sarah,

"Basic Paragraph" is InDesign's default style while "Normal" is Microsoft Word's default styling. If "Normal" shows up in your Paragraph Styles palette you must have imported a Word document into InDesign. It doesn't do any harm to allow the styles from Word to import with the text. However, you *can* control which, if any, Word styles import into your document. After you select File>Place, check the "Show Import Options" box in the lower left of the window. You will be given options for mapping the Word styles to your preset InDesign styles.

For many workflows, mapping styles and controlling style importing is unnecessary at that level of detail.

For more information about handling Word to InDesign importing, check out this guide from InDesign magazine:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CCEQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fww...

(It's for CS5, but a lot of the information applies at least back to CS3)

Roy