Illustrator CS introduces the concept of styled type, through paragraph and character styles. Styles are just a fancy name for a collection of character or paragraph attributes that allow you to make several changes at once.
For instance, you may want to use the exact same font, point size, and justification for all your type in a document. Instead of changing each of the settings each time you create a type object, you can use a style to change all the settings at once. Even better, if you decide that the initial font, or size, or justification needs to be changed, you can simply update the style, and all the type with that style applied changes instantly!
Of the two types of type styles in Illustrator, Paragraph styles are much more common — and powerful. For not only do they contain all the attributes you find in the Paragraph palette, but also all the character attributes as well. Character styles only contain character attributes (and are useful for type within paragraphs, where you don’t want an entire paragraph to change).
To create a paragraph style, set up your type just the way you want it to appear, and then click the New Style button in the Paragraph palette. To apply that style to type, select a type object or make a selection with the Type tool, and then click the name of the style once in the Paragraph palette.