Got a long brief or other document that has lots of headings, subheadings, etc.? You need Styles, baby.
No, not style — Styles.
The Styles function in Word is a handy tool for, among other things, setting up headings for different sections of a document. These styles serve a dual purpose: not only do they help keep document formatting consistent (i.e., all paragraph and subparagraph headings at a particular level, for example, will be consistent through the document), they can help later when you create a Table of Contents, since Word can use these styles to create the levels of your Table of Contents.
There are a couple of different ways to use Styles & Formatting (as the feature is formally known) in your document.
Using and modifying existing Styles
Word templates (like the Normal.dot template you use for most new documents) come with a pre-defined set of Styles for you to use. To take advantage of these Styles, you can use either the handy drop-down menu on the left-hand side of the Formatting toolbar, or you can invoke the Styles & Formatting pane on the right-hand side of your screen to get a fuller view of what’s available.
Here, let me show you:
Adding your own Styles to a document
In some cases, you may want some special formatting that the Word template you’re using doesn’t include. For example, I tend to want a Style just for indented quotes. I mean, who wants to go through all that paragraph formatting every single time? Not me, baby.
Here’s a quick tutorial on how to make your own document Style:
Once you get the hang of this feature, you’ll find that it’s easy to put together consistently formatted briefs and other long documents.
And one bonus: using Styles & Formatting helps in putting together an automatic (read: self-updating) Table of Contents if your document needs one. (Stay tuned for that video.)
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