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What Style! Word Formatting now with Colossal Panache – Part 1

Style is important. Have you ever edited a rough draft comprising an exotic style collage of fonts, headers, colors, and shapes—wanting only to take some Ibuprofen and have a small cry? Have you ever seen a document that looks like some artsy style maelstrom of formatting and rare font styles?

And you have to fix it without swearing.

But with Styles in Microsoft Word, you can succeed, without harsh language.

Why It’s Important to Have Style?

Microsoft Styles, which are a group of formatting settings, offer a variety of advantages when drafting documents, especially large ones.

  • Ensure consistent formatting
  • Empower users to create cleaner, more professional formatting
  • Simplify tables of contents and outline creation
  • Streamline reformatting simply and efficiently

Where do I Acquire Style?

Word offers a gallery of pre-made styles on its home tap.

Style gallery

These styles cover everything from normal (body text), headings, footnotes, hyperlinks, comments, lists, and others.

Word offers three kinds of style:

  • Paragraph Styles – Includes line and paragraph formatting (font, indentation, alignment, and line spacing that apply to everything in a paragraph.)
  • Character Styles – Include font formatting (modifications) without affecting paragraphs.
  • Linked Styles – Includes as either character or paragraph styles

You can make a new style or change one included.

What is the Gateway to Style?

The Word Styles Panel is a gateway to all the style available to you. Click the tiny arrow on the styles section of your home ribbon to open the panel.

How to access Word's style panel

A list of style

You should see a list of styles with their name on the left and style-type on the right.

  • Paragraph Styles are designated with a pilcrow “¶”
  • Character Styles are designated with the letter “a”
  • Linked Styles uses both designations

Filter which styles you want to see by clicking the Options button at the bottom of the panel. You will see the following window appear.

Style Panel Options

To filter by specific style type, simply click on the top drop-down-menu and select the desire style type.

Filter style

Use the second top drop-down-menu to change the way style list is sorted.

Sorted style

Are You Exited Yet?

Check out the second have of this article for how to make style happen consistently in my next post.

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