The styles feature in your word processor helps you quickly and consistently change the appearance of your documents as you try out different designs. Styles let you define the text attributes of items such as headings, pull quotes, and body text. With styles, you can ensure consistency, because you don't have to reformat every instance of a design element if you decide to make a change. For example, if you decided to change the appearance of all first-level headings in your document, you could make the change only once using the styles feature; your word processor would then automatically reformat every first-level heading in the document. As discussed in Chapter 12, you can also use styles to quickly create a table of contents.
Ineffective formatting |
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This page is from a long report featuring dozens of headings. Notice in the formatting toolbar that the writer has applied several individual formatting elements to the normal text to create a first-level heading: bold, 14-point type, Arial typeface, and 12-point spacing before heading.
A writer who wanted to change the look of the first-level headings would have to make those changes to every instance of the heading in the report. Because it takes five to six mouse clicks or keystrokes to achieve these effects for each heading, the writer would face a sizeable task-and might decide not to bother. In addition, the number of changes needed would increase the likelihood that the writer would miss a heading and have an inconsistently designed document. http://www.gao.gov/special.pubs/soi/os97002.pdf 
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Effective use of styles feature | |
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This is the same page from the example above, except that the writer has made effective use of styles. Notice in the formatting toolbar that the writer has applied the Heading 1 style to the report's first-level headings. To change the look of the first-level headings, all the writer would need to do is to modify the Heading 1 style once, and the software would automatically update all the first-level headings.
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