How to effectively use Character Styles

Hello, I am fairly new to InDesign, but have an extensive background with FrameMaker. I am having trouble figuring out how to best use character styles in ID, because of the difference between it and FM.
Lets say I have two different body text styles, which use different fonts or different sizes, each of which is saved as a paragraph style.
In Framemaker, when you go into the Character Style editor, for each value you can select the value "As Is". So if I want to make a Bold character style, I leave the font and size attributes set to "As Is" and I change only the weight attribute to Bold.
Now, I can select either Body Text 1 or Body Text 2 for the paragraph style and if I want to bold a word, I just highlight that word and select the Bold character style. The text is bolded but everything else that is unique to that paragraph style remains. If I ever need to unbold the word, I can just select it and then select No Style from the Character Style catalog
But in ID, it looks like you have to define the value for each attribute in the Character Style editor. So I would need to create two separate bold styles, one for each paragraph style, because if I define the font and size, it will switch those values as well as the weight. And if I need to create a separate Bold Character style for each paragraph style in which the default font is not bolded, what is the advantage of using character styles? Why not simply highlight the text and select the bold value from the Character palette, which then modifies the paragraph style just for those words that you bolded?

Thanks,
I was looking at some existing documents, which I think were created by folks who didn't know what they were doing (I am new to this job and all of the previous folks doing what I do are gone - and they clearly did not understand how to properly use styles). All of the fields had values in them, and when I didn't see an "As Is" value, it never occurred to me that I could just highlight the value and delete it to get rid of it.
When you use a bunch of different Adobe products, even though they have fairly similar user interfaces, it is those differences that really get you.....
Thanks, again

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I would like to learn how to apply a Character Style and have tried looking around but nothing seems to work.
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Thanks.

select the text where u went and run below script after change group as per ur template.
var myDoc = app.activeDocument;
var mySel = app.selection[0];
//Clear the find/change grep preferences.
app.findGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.nothing;
app.changeGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.nothing;
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app.findChangeGrepOptions.includeLockedLayersForFind = false;
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//app.changeGrepPreferences.capitalization = Capitalization.allCaps;
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//~ app.changeGrepPreferences.pointSize = "12";
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How to use character styles in the Find/Change JavaScripts?

First, good luck to Ole. He's been so helpful (and such a good writer, too). All the best!
My Find/Change JavaScripts are running into trouble at line 159 of the ExtendScript Toolkit. The script is searching for a particular font, to which it should then apply a character style. I'm using the format I see in Adobe's "FindChangeList" sample text, but the script is still hitting a wall. What am I doing wrong? I'd like to have a working method for searching, not only for fonts, but also for finding a particular character or paragraph style and then applying a new style.
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Try this,
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Hi,
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How to effectively use Character Styles

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