Styles

Styles are one of the most important features to understand when using MSWord. Many components within MSWord use styles – making your job easier – so it is essential to fully grasp the concepts of styles. For this article, we will focus on heading styles, named Heading 1-9.

Heading Styles

Heading styles automatically come with MSWord – they are there whether you want them, or not! For many users, ignoring them is totally acceptable; however, experienced users have learned the benefits of working with them. It won’t take long, however, before you realize that the default formatting of these styles needs to be changed to fit the formatting of most legal documents. So let’s start there…

Applying Styles

Several styles, including a couple of heading styles, can be easily applied to selected text using the Styles section on the Home Ribbon. To apply a style, select the text, then click on a style. Simple!

Heading Styles

Helpful Keystrokes

It might be a good time to introduce a couple keystrokes that we really like. Both of these keystrokes will open a separate pane containing style commands. Either of these can be moved around by dragging the title bar, or you can dock them to the left or right by dragging it all the way to either side. Which one is the best? Whichever one fits your needs! Sometimes we have both active in the document; sometimes we switch between them depending on the document we are working in.

  • CTRL+SHIFT+S will open the Apply Styles pane. It reflects the name of the style applied either to the text where your cursor is placed or to the selected text. The drop-down list will let you change, or apply, a different style to your active text. The Modify button is located in the Apply Styles pane. You will use this make changes to a style. The Styles button display another pane with more commands.

Heading Styles

  • CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+S will open the Styles pane (as if you clicked the Styles button on the Apply Styles pane). This pane displays the list of styles (rather than a drop-down list). A favorite in this list is the Clear All – which removes any direct formatting and removes any applied style. This is quick way to strip the active text of all formatting! Each style in the list has a drop-down arrow giving you several commands like Update to Match Selection and the Modify command. At the bottom of the Styles pane, there are 3 more buttons that are very helpful: New Style, Style Inspector, and Manage Styles. These commands are explored more fully in separate articles.

Heading Styles

Hopefully these options – the Style section on the Home Ribbon and the 2 keystrokes – will give you access to the commands you need while working with styles in your documents.

Why Use Heading Styles

We have mentioned that there are several elements in MSWord that use heading styles. If you need more motivation to learn about and use heading styles, the fact that the following features use heading styles should give you some incentive:

  • Numbering
  • Cross-References
  • Table of Contents
  • Hyperlinks
  • Page Numbering and Captions that use Chapter Numbering
  • SEQ Fields
  • HTML (publishing to the internet) uses H1, H2, etc.
  • Creating Bookmarks in PDF’s
  • Outline View
  • Navigation Pane (one of our personal favs!!)
  • Stability (saved the best for last)

Happy Learning!

 

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