Using multiple styles in a paragraph

[May31Dave]

I would like to use multiple styles in a single paragraph. This was possible in Word 2004. All it took was selecting a sentence or word in the paragraph and applying the style. This does not seem to work in Word 2008. Any ideas on how to accomplish this>

 

[John McGhie]

Hi May:

You can still do this.

There has been a bug fix put in to stop the "style salad" of broken styles
that resulted in Word 2004 and Word 2003.

The previous behaviour was that if you attempted to apply a style to part of
paragraph that already had a paragraph style applied, Word would create a
new style of the same name as the style you were applying, but it would be a
Character style type and contain only the Character properties.

The damage, mayhem, corruption and confusion this created in documents
around the world was simply beyond belief. Someone at Microsoft
fundamentally misunderstood the purpose and usage of styles, and built a
mechanism that was just laughably absurd to anyone who wanted to use styles.

This behaviour has now been corrected in Word 2008.

For example: If I have a paragraph in Heading 1 style, and I select part of
that paragraph and apply Heading 2 style, I will get "Heading 2" applied to
the selection.

The difference is simple on the surface: You get two styles applied to the
same text. Under the surface, it's a lot more complex. Get back to me if
you need the details of that (not really of interest to us on the Mac,
because the difference only shows up if you are working in VBA).

The bottom line is that the new style applied to the selection REMAINS
Heading 2, no new styles are created, and Heading 2's properties are not
changed.

Documentation professionals can now relax: unskilled users will no longer
break their carefully-crafted documents by mangling the style table beyond
belief by choosing the "brightest coloured" styles closest to the top of the
list

Hope this helps

I would like to use multiple styles in a single paragraph. This was possible
in Word 2004. All it took was selecting a sentence or word in the paragraph
and applying the style. This does not seem to work in Word 2008. Any ideas on
how to accomplish this>

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[May31Dave]

Thanks John,

I figured out what I was doing wrong. I was trying to apply two paragraph styles to the same paragraph. Once I changed the styles to character styles I no longer have the problem. I can now apply multiple styles to a paragraph and just the selected text changes as I want.

Dave

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Dave:

The "selection" has more to do with the difficulty than the type of style.

You are correct: if one style is a Paragraph Style and one is a Character
style, you can apply two styles to the one paragraph.

New in Word 2008 is the ability to "safely" apply two paragraph styles to
the same paragraph, provided they are applied to different parts of it. If
you select only "part" of a paragraph, Word 2008 is smart enough to apply on
the Character properties of the second style, provided the selection does
not include a paragraph mark.

If you have the paragraph mark selected, the whole paragraph will change to
the second style (unless the second style is a Character style).

Hope this helps

Thanks John,

I figured out what I was doing wrong. I was trying to apply two paragraph
styles to the same paragraph. Once I changed the styles to character styles I
no longer have the problem. I can now apply multiple styles to a paragraph and
just the selected text changes as I want.

Dave

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]