Defining Styles

Styles are key to the underlying power of Word. They allow you to consistently define how your text should look throughout a document or a series of documents. There are a number of ways in which you can define styles, but the way you use will depend most heavily on the version of Word you are using. To define a style using Word 97 and Word 2000, simply follow these steps:

1. Choose Style from the Format menu. Word displays the Style dialog box.
2. If desired, you can choose one of the pre-defined styles that appear at the left side of the Style dialog box. In many cases, these can save you a great deal of work for common treatments of text.
3. If you picked a pre-defined style, click on Modify. If you want to define a style from scratch, click on New. Either way, you see essentially the same dialog box that allows you to set the attributes of the style.
4. If you are defining a new style, make sure you specify the name and type of style you are creating. You can also indicate if this new style is based on (derived from) an existing style.
5. Click on the Format button to make changes to the actual formatting attributes assigned to the style. The types of formatting available depend on whether you are working with a paragraph or character style.
6. When you are done setting the formatting attributes, click on OK to close the dialog box. Word again displays the Style dialog box and your style is listed in the available styles list.
7. Click on Close to dismiss the Style dialog box.

Both Word 2002 and Word 2003 use a task pane in their user interface, which means that there are some differences in how you define styles:

1. Choose Styles and Formatting from the Format menu. Word displays the Styles and Formatting task pane.
2. If desired, you can choose one of the pre-defined styles that appear in the list of available styles. In many cases, these can save you a great deal of work for common treatments of text.
3. If you picked a pre-defined style, move the mouse pointer over the top of the style name, click on the down-arrow to the right of the style name, and then click on Modify. If you want to define a style from scratch, click on New Style. Either way, you see essentially the same dialog box that allows you to set the attributes of the style. (Click here to see a related figure.)
4. If you are defining a new style, make sure you specify the name and type of style you are creating. You can also indicate if this new style is based on (derived from) an existing style.
5. Click on the Format button to make changes to the actual formatting attributes assigned to the style. The types of formatting available depend on whether you are working with a paragraph or character style.
6. When you are done setting the formatting attributes, click on OK to close the dialog box. Word updates the style list in the Styles and Formatting task pane, if necessary.
7. Close the Styles and Formatting task pane, if desired.

And, of course, the introduction of Word 2007 saw a wholesale change in the user interface from previous versions. Remarkably, the steps aren't that much different from those used in Word 2002 and Word 2003. The biggest difference is in how the task pane is displayed and how you use the controls in the task pane:

1. Display the Home tab of the ribbon.
2. Click the small icon at the lower-right corner of the Styles group. Word displays the Styles task pane.
3. If desired, you can choose one of the pre-defined styles that appear in the list of available styles. In many cases, these can save you a great deal of work for common treatments of text.
4. If you picked a pre-defined style, move the mouse pointer over the top of the style name, click on the down-arrow to the right of the style name, and then click on Modify. If you want to define a style from scratch, click on the New Style button in the lower-left corner of the task pane. Either way, you see essentially the same dialog box that allows you to set the attributes of the style.
5. If you are defining a new style, make sure you specify the name and type of style you are creating. You can also indicate if this new style is based on (derived from) an existing style.
6. Click on the Format button to make changes to the actual formatting attributes assigned to the style. The types of formatting available depend on whether you are working with a paragraph or character style.
7. When you are done setting the formatting attributes, click on OK to close the dialog box. Word updates the style list in the Styles and Formatting task pane, if necessary.
8. Close the Styles and Formatting task pane, if desired.

Once the style is defined (or an existing style modified), you can use your style anywhere you like within your document.