After much searching to no avail, I am posting my rather simple question here: Is there a one or two keystroke way to highlight text in OSX Pages? From what I have found, the currently available multiple-keystroke methods render highlighting during text editing of documents very impractical.
MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 15.3
Apple uses the misleading Insert menu > Highlight (⇧⌘H) which inserts a colored comment field. This is not the industry standard text background color highlight that is discussed further in Add a background color to text in Pages on Mac - Apple Support. Certainly not the one or two keystroke text highlighting you want.
However, you could place a color text background on a word and then save that as a new character style with a function key shortcut (e.g. F1 - F8) in a saved custom template. Then all you need to do with future documents is use that custom template and apply the character style.
Create and use character styles in Pages on Mac - Apple Support
One or two keystroke text highlighting in Pages
