Problems with a style sheet in InDesign CS3

Question

Hello everyone. I was wondering if anyone had any clue as to what the holy heck is happening to me.
I am attempting to standardize our documents and use style sheets--hey, what a concept, right? So I'm going through a recently completed document and grabbing text and using that to create paragraph style sheets and character based style sheets.
With one paragraph style sheet, the text is set to Janson Text Lt Stnd 55 Roman. However, when you apply the style sheet to a paragraph, the first word sets to a missing font. The rest of the paragraph is OK. It's only the first word. The paragraph style sheet does not have a "+" next to it. Highlighting the individual word and reapplying the paragraph style sheet does not change this.
I went to the character style palette, thinking that there was an override. Nope, the character style was set to "None." I clicked on "Override" to apply the paragraph style, and again, the first word is stubbornly refusing to change.
What gives? I am stumped!
Best,
Chryss

Answer 1

Styles based on Basic paragraph are a nightmare because every document starts with a basic paragraph style, and there's no guarantee that it will be the same from document to document. When you import styles based on Basic Paragraph from some other document, different attributes will be overridden depending on what is the same, and what is different.
The best way to deal with this is to either import the basic paragraph stle along with everything else, or put all the docs in one book file and pick one to use as the master, then synchronize the styles.
It sounds like your first word problem could be an applied character style, though, or less likely, a nested style.
Peter