As a follow up to this, the problem seems to be in the properties display (f2). It displays the Paragraph Style as None, but in fact the object retains the settings of that style and those properties will change if the style is updated from the styles menu (f3). I believe there have been other comments concerning the properties display. Because of this, I incorrectly assumed a script I wrote to set styles wasn't working when in fact it was. The irony of all this is now that I've discovered the scrapbook is actually retaining the style properties I don't need the script!!, but I am learning a little about Python.