The Big Picture
You may be tempted to use the formatting bar in FrameMaker to change the appearance of text. Stick with paragraph formats instead. Text changes made with the formatting bar are bereft of global update options.
Paragraph formats let you design once, apply multiple times. You can also change the appearance of all paragraph text with the same paragraph tag at one time by making the change one time in the Paragraph Designer. By using the Formatting bar to individually format paragraph text, you wouldn't have the luxury of making a change to all the paragraphs at one time, not to mention the inconsistent results that can occur throughout a document.