In Word, there are a variety of styles to choose from. Paragraph and character styles are the most often utilized. Paragraph styles are used to format a paragraph. And within a paragraph, character styles are used to format characters.
For a professional look and consistency, one must use styles.
Microsoft Word provides 4 types of general styles:
- Paragraph styles: may contain character style format options, but they impact a paragraph's overall look.
- Character styles: Character styles are used to format smaller parts of the text and decide how the text will appear in terms of individual characters.
- Table styles: Have the following table attributes: (a) Header row, (b) Gridlines & (c) Accent color
- List styles: Have the following table attributes : (a) Bulleted list format, (b) Indent & (c) Numbered list Format
Steps to apply a style to your text
Step 1 - Text Selection:
The text selection can be done in the following ways:
- Select the text to format for applying a character style.
- Place your cursor in the paragraph to apply a paragraph style to it.
- Select the text you want to format to apply a paragraph style to several paragraphs.
Step 2 - Style Selection and Apply:
(a) Using Mouse:
- To preview a style, point to it on the Home tab (In the right-most section).
- From the list of styles, choose any of the styles which you want for your selected text.
Like for the selected text in step 1, we choose a style: List Paragraph. The changed style is shown in the green box above.
(b) Using Keyboard:
- Press Ctrl + Shift + S
- A dialog box for apply styles is popped up. Choose your style for the selected text by navigating down by pressing Alt + Down Arrow.
Reasons for using styles in a document:
- Efficiency: Without having to format each part manually, you may define a style once and apply it to each section in the document.
- Easy Modification: You only need to edit a style once if you wish to change the attributes of all text formatted in that style if you use styles consistently in your document.
- Consistency: When you utilize styles to format your document, each part is styled in the same way, giving it a professional, clean appearance.
- Table of Contents: To design a table of contents in speed, styles can be used.
- Working in Outline View: Styles make it simple to arrange the major points in your work.