What's the correct way to apply proper styles to Tables?

[Jen]

I am trying to format my documents using styles, but I'm having real trouble
when it comes to tables. I'm not sure I understand how Word's styles apply to
tables. I have set up a table style that makes the top row of my tables
shaded (it's also supposed to bold the top line, although this doesn't always
work). But I want my table text to be smaller - 10 pt instead of 12 pt - and
I usually need different justification, alignment, etc.

Is there no way to set up a table style that takes all this into account? If
not, how do you get around this? Do I need to set up a whole other set of
styles for the fonts, alignments, etc. I use within my tables? Maybe it's
just me, but this seems like an awful lot of styles, not to mention work!!

 

[Jezebel]

As part of the table style, you can set properties independently for each of
the options under the 'Apply formatting to' (whole table, top row, odd
columns, etc). Unless you do a lot of tables that are identically formatted,
this is usually as much specification as you want in advance; beyond that
you generally need to apply paragraph styles to individual paragraphs within
the table.