Lesson: Styles in Word

Pointing at a laptop screen

Aims of the lesson

  • Understand the importance of using styles when creating documents
  • By able to apply styles to text
  • Know how to modify the style e.g. changing the font, text size, colour, spacing
  • Automatically create a contents page
  • Save your new style for future use

 

What are styles?

  • Styles are where a set of formatting options are automatically applied to text which you select.
  • It enables you to set the font, text size, spacing, colour and other formatting elements for different text elements within a document.
  • This is typically used to style the ‘Normal’ text (paragraph text) and any titles and headings quickly and consistently

 

Why are they important?

  • They can help you to save time when creating and editing your document, quickly applying formatting to the text.
  • Provides consistency of formatting throughout you document or across documents if you save it as a new style set.
  • Help to navigate around and reorganize a document using the navigation pane
  • Create an automatic contents page, rather than manually updating the headings and page numbers
  • Using styles can make a document more accessible helping people using assistive technology to understand the layout of a document.

 

How do I use them?

 

Accessibility

  • Not all styles built into Word use an accessible font, text size and layout.
  • Try and ensure the style you use has the following as a minimum
  • Sans serif fonts (without the flared extensions) like Arial or Verdana
  • Text size of 12 and larger for headings
  • Text is aligned to the left, unless it is identified clearly as a heading
  • Spacing provides sufficient gaps between text to make it easier to read
  • Try running the accessibility checker to pick on any further issues

 

Conclusion

  • Using styles can make formatting documents quicker and easier. Not only do they help you to be consistent they can also assist you in creating a contents page and navigating through long documents.
  • They also help others who view your documents. Helping them to quickly navigate to the relevant parts and distinguish between different headings.

 

Further Help