Another option ...

I never use the formatted entry feature, but I did play with it briefly just now, and I see how it might not play well with the PickList feature. If there is a way, I'm sure Emmanuel or Marianne will enlighten us.

Meanwhile, I would like to suggest another option for you. Since you are only interested in changing the font (and, I assume, no other formatting attributes), and you also want to make use of the PickList feature, it might be easier to simply trigger a font change before and after your list.

I have a number of font shorts to change font name, font size, and font color. I name all the shorts with a leading hyphen to keep them separate from my regular shorts that begin with "f" and to minimize the chance of triggering them by accident.

There are a number of ways to trigger the new font. The easiest way is to use the default Ctrl+D keyboard shortcut (if you haven't overwritten that shortcut with something else). Other options are to store the font changes in a macro or style, assign the macro or style to a keyboard shortcut, and enter the keyboard shortcut into the IT entry. I just use Ctrl+D in my IT entries.

Here's what a sample font change might look like:

short: -font-times
display: Font - Times Roman
entry:

{Ctrl D}
times
{Wait}100{/Wait}
{Enter}
{NoSpacing}

Note: I always include Wait statements whenever my expansions contain multiple manual entries that are internal to the software app, just to ensure that the app has time to catch up to IT's timing. It's not always needed, and you can always eliminate the Wait statement for starters and see if you actually need it.

With the font change entries, you could do one of two things:

1. Manually trigger the font change (using the short) before triggering the list text. Then manually trigger the font change back to the default font after expanding the list.

or

2. Instead of having a separate font short (or in addition to), add the font change command to the beginning of the list, along with an additional command at the end to change back to the default font.

As for your he/she/they entries, there might be some additional things you can do to streamline that as well, depending on your needs for those projects that use variable genders.

Is the list just a brief one-off thing that occurs in random documents, but not something you do in all or most projects? Is that the only time you need to deal with gender variables is when you need to produce that (presumably brief) list?

Or, alternatively, do you do this frequently in your work? And if so, do you have multiple expansions in a single document or series of documents for the same individual that require gender references? Then perhaps you'll start on a new but similar project with similar documents for a new individual of a different gender?

If the latter is closer to your typical work scenario, although a picklist and even stop/resume are handy for that type of thing, you can optionally eliminate the need to type all the genders each time you need to expand a phrase or blurb or list that is gender-specific. I won't bore you details you may not need, but if this applies to you, let me know, and I'll elaborate further.

-Karen :)