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How to use styles without pain

How to use styles without pain

I use Microsoft Word to publish our High School Curriculum. It’s great because I use a single programme to add content and style to a document. It’s terrible because the styles are not always consistent.

To add content word wins every award you can think of. To add style Word fails miserably. If you know about Microsoft Words’ style problems, you know pain. This document will attempt to help you through Microsoft Words’ style misery.

Create the style template

We need to create a style template so we can see how styles work in Microsoft Word. Determining what style to use is beyond the scope of this how to. We will create a Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, body text, numbered list, and bulleted list. Find out more about beautiful typography here.

Heading 1

  1. Open a new blank document
  2. Type Heading 1
  3. Change the formatting to the following:
  • Century Schoolbook
  • 48 pts
  • Paragraph spacing before: 0 pts
  • Paragraph spacing after: Auto
  • Left Indent: 1.59 cm

Heading 2

  1. Type Heading 2
  2. Change the formatting to the following:
  • Century Schoolbook
  • 36 pts
  • Paragraph spacing before: 0 pts
  • Paragraph spacing after: Auto
  • Left indent: 1.59 cm

Heading 3

  1. Type Heading 3
  2. Change the formatting to the following:
  • Century Schoolbook
  • 18 pts
  • Paragraph spacing before: Auto
  • Paragraph spacing after: 0 pts
  • Left indent: 1.59 cm

Body Text

  1. Type lorem(1), and press enter. Word will create one paragraph of dummy text for you.
    To see more information about Lorem ipsum follow this link.
  2. Change the formatting to the following:
  • Calibri
  • 10 pts
  • Paragraph spacing before: Auto
  • Paragraph spacing after: Auto
  • Left indent: 1.59 cm

Numbered List

  1. We would like to make our list look like the lists prescribed here.
    Words’ default behaviour with lists is to indent them. We would like to use hanging punctuation for all our lists. Mark Boulton has an excellent tutorial as to why you need to use hanging punctuation.
  2. Type the following:
    List 1
    List 2
    List 3
  3. Select all and add numbering.
  4. Change the formatting to the following:
  • Calibri
  • 10 pts
  • Paragraph spacing before: 0 pts
  • Paragraph spacing after: auto
  • Left indent: 0.95 cm
  • Hanging by: 0.63 cm

Bulleted text

  1. Use hanging punctuation again.
  2. Type the following:
    Bullet 1
    Bullet 2
    Bullet 3
  3. Select all and add bullets
  4. Change the formatting to the following:
  • Calibri
  • 10 pts
  • Paragraph spacing before: 0 pts
  • Paragraph spacing after: auto
  • Left indent: 0.95 cm
  • Hanging by: 0.63 cm

Add Quick Styles to your document

Word 2007’s quick styles make it easy to add styles to a document. Simply right click on some text and save it as a new quick style. You need to modify each style as well to include certain parameters.

A style based on the normal template will not work. You need to change the styles’ based on property or your style will have many problems.

Add Heading 1 style

  1. Right click on Heading 1. Paragraph styles don’t require you to select the entire paragraph.
  2. Select Styles and then click on Save selection as new quick style…
  3. Change the name of the quick style to Example Heading 1. You can call it anything as long as it does not yet exist.
  4. Select Modify… We need to change some more parameters.
  5. Change Style based on to Heading 1. Your styles settings will change. Change the font and paragraph settings to match the settings as above. You will need to change the font effects and paragraph spacing. The style changes because we based the style on Heading 1, and therefore will change to heading 1’s style formatting.
  6. Click on Ok.
  7. Repeat the steps to add the style for Heading 2, Heading 3, Body text, Numbered List, and Bulleted List.

You will need to choose Body text for your paragraph settings. Choose List for your numbered list. Choose List bullet for your bulleted list.

In this document you can create consistent formatting. Great, but how do you create a style for all documents?

Save the quick style

You can save quick styles and use them for all documents. You need to make some adjustments to your quick styles.

  1. Right click on the quick style in the quick style gallery, and select Modify…
  2. Select New documents based on this template.
  3. Click on Ok.
  4. Change all the styles.
  5. Remove the styles you don’t want from the style gallery. Right click on the style and select Remove from Quick style gallery.
  6. Select Change Styles and then Style Gallery.
  7.  
  8. Select Save as quick style set.
  9. Save the style set.

Your can select your new quick style set by selecting it from the Change styles list.

Share your quick styles

Share your quick styles with your colleagues by copying the quick style you saved earlier to C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Microsoft\QuickStyles

Do you want to learn more?

Styles and all their wonders form part of the Zero to hero series. You can learn all about styles in the Advanced Word course.

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