Taking a little extra time to use styles in Microsoft Word can save you time in the long run. In this post I’m going to give a brief introduction to styles.
Styles allow users to create custom formatted text that can be applied to portions of your document quickly and easily. By taking the time to create styles and apply them to the different elements in your document, you can easily modify the formatting of your entire document with a few simple clicks. This becomes especially useful on long documents with many different text elements. Another benefit to using styles is to help ensure consistency in formatting throughout your documents.
To create a new style in Word 2007, click on the small expand icon in the styles area of the ribbon tool bar.
This will open the styles window. Once this window is open, you can click on the new style icon.
You will then be presented with the style editor. 
In this editor you will find your basic options for modifying your text. You will want to make sure to give your style a descriptive name. For example, “ChapterHead” for the heading style used at the beginning of each chapter, or “BibText” for your citation text. By giving your styles a descriptive name you will know exactly what the style is used for when glancing at the list.
You will then choose the “Style type” that is appropriate for your style. If your style is based on another style you can select it in the “Style based on” drop down box. This can save you time if you want a style that will change if the base style changes. The last option in the properties section allows you to specify the style the next paragraph will be. So if you have a “ChapterHead” style that will always be followed by “BodyText” you can select “BodyText” here. This is nice when you are typing a document as you simply change to “ChapterHead”, type your heading, and when you press enter Word will automatically change your style to “BodyText”.
The remaining options on this page are the same as the basic paragraph formatting options we are all used to in Word. Once you have made all the changes you want, simply click “OK”, and your new style will show up in the styles list. You can now apply this new style by selecting the text you want to apply it to (or for a paragraph style, simply make sure your cursor is in the paragraph you want to change), and click on the style name in the styles list. If you have a different style set for the following paragraph, it will also be changed.
I have only scratched the surface of styles in this post. I hope to create a few more tutorials on styles in the coming weeks that will help you to better utilize them in your documents. While it is quite cumbersome to initially create the styles, the time spent is well worth it in the long run.
Posted by nickteg 