Video: Using Styles in Word (2024)

You might format a document while you type, or change fonts for things like headings. Here’s a better way to get your document looking smart: Quick Styles.

Don’t change fonts, use Quick Styles

• You might format a document while you type, or change fonts, font size, or colors for things like headings. Here’s a better way to get your document looking smart: Quick Styles.

• Give it a try by clicking the Style buttons in the ribbon on the HOME tab.

There’s a mantra I kind of use.

I think it is attributed to Stephen King who says, “Don’t get it right (air quotes right), get it written.”

Here is another thing. Don’t get it formatted, get it written. Work on formatting your document afterwards.

It’s a little tough if you come from the old typewriter age, or if you are a kid, I know, because I have a couple of teenagers. As soon as they click this thing, and they look at fonts they’re gone for five minutes, right?

But what I am going to show you is the advantages of doing that.

So, here we have an unformatted document about the Solar system.

Here’s what I would normally do if I didn’t know about styles.

I might take my title here and okay I want to center that.

Okay, I’ll make it big. I don’t know how big.

I guess that looks good.

Here is my author thing and I am going to try to center that, and I’ll make a little smaller, I guess.

Okay, now, I have all these headings.

What should I do for a heading? Well, let’s make it a color.

I like colors.

So let’s kind of I don’t know about that.

Let’s make that a little bigger.

I don’t know...16 point font, maybe. Maybe?

Oh some spacing.

I could do a carriage return.

Carriage returns are bad, especially if you’re continuing typing because now you’re in that font.

That’s bad.

So let’s get away from the carriage return and maybe you know about, ooh, spacing.

If you go up to the paragraph in the ribbon here in this little triangle on the bottom right-hand corner, that will open your Paragraph settings.

And after I am going to put a little six point. Sure. I don’t know what that is. Sure.

Okay, that gives it a little spacing.

Now if I have to do this for each of my headings, I know about Format Painter, so I can take this format, go over up here to Format Painter in the ribbon, click on that and now everything I touch will be painted like that.

Oops. So that’s cool.

I can do that.

But if I am doing that for a lot of headings, I have to go through my entire document.

That can be kind of troublesome.

I can do all those steps: change font, change spacing, change color with headings.

I am going to go up here to the Quick Styles, which is up here in the ribbon.

The Planets here, I’m going to hit Heading 1 and it has just given me some spacing.

It has changed the font.

It has changed the color.

Kind of just what I did there with three steps, I can do with styles.

So let me click Asteroids and hit Heading 1 again.

So I can go through my document this way.

Now The Planets, that’s going to be a different heading, so I can do Heading 2 and I don’t have to worry about well it’s 16 point font for Heading 1, what should...

Should this be 14 point font? Should it be a different color? I don’t have to worry about that.

I can just go through my document and choose the heading.

So here’s a planet. That’s going to be...

Oops I hit something on the ribbon here.Heading 2. The Earth is Heading 2. Now the moons that will be another part. That’s going to be Heading 3. So you got the idea here. So Mars is Heading 2.

And the Phobos and Deimos, which are the moons of Mars. They will have Heading 3.