In Word 2003, choose Styles and Formatting from the Formatting menu to display the Styles and Formatting task pane.įor the most part, you’ll work with two types of styles: character and paragraph. These attributes change from one version to another, so don’t worry if your Normal style isn’t exactly the same. As you can see in Figure A, Normal claims some of the following format attributes:įigure A Normal is Word’s default text style.
To see what that really means, formatting-wise, right-click Normal in the Quick Styles gallery (in the Styles group on the Home tab), and choose Modify. When you open a blank document and start typing, you’re using a style named Normal. Word comes with oodles of them, and you can create your own. Style basicsĪ Word style is a set of formatting instructions. There’s no downloadable example file for this article. Most of the features discussed in this article aren’t supported by the earlier. This article uses Word 2010, but I’ll supply instructions for other versions when significantly different.
Because the Quick Styles gallery offers the quickest route, I’ll then show you how to customize this gallery by adding the styles you use most often. In this article, I’ll show you how to access Word’s built-in styles using the Quick Styles gallery, the Styles pane, and the Apply Styles dialog. There are easy ways to access styles, but sometimes the volume and list order are less than helpful. Some users find Word’s built-in styles difficult to apply and manage. Instead, learn how to manage them, so you can put them to work for you.