when to use styles

[Chip Orange]

We're creating some templates, and one person prefers to use some direct
formatting on the text of the template, while another here prefers to use
styles.

Can anyone provide guidelines or recommendations on when styles should be
created for formatting, and when direct formatting should be used?

thanks.

Chip

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Chip

For what it's worth, this is my rule of thumb:

For all templates, or any kind document other than a quick throw-away
document to be created once, printed once and probably never opened
again, use styles for all formatting, except the following:

(a) bold, italic or underlining where you're formatting only some words
within a paragraph (eg "The history of the Titanic" would get Titanic in
direct formatting italics)

(b) when the particular paragraph or character formatting appears once
only within the document (ie if you use the same formatting twice,
create a style)

but ...

(c) use a style when the paragraph has a particular structural role,
even though it only appears once (eg the title).

Here are some practical applications of this rule:

1. If you use a particular format to indicate words that appear in a
glossary (eg they're in italics or green or bold or all three), then
create a character style called, eg, "Glossary Terms".

2. If you have a standard Body Text style with space after the
paragraph, but you don't want the space after the paragraph when it's
introducing a bulleted list, create a paragraph style called, eg, "Body
Text Bullet Intro".

3. If you mark off major portions of the document with a border or a
rule, create a style with the border or rule.

4. If you add page-width in-line pictures or graphics to your document,
create a paragraph style called, eg, "Pictures" to hold them.

Three hints:

1. Name your styles for their purpose (eg SubTitle), not their
formatting (eg don't name a style BoldBlue).

2. If you're creating a template to create documents requiring several
styles, set up a special toolbar in the template that holds menus and
buttons for all the styles that users will need. If you make it easy for
users, they will use styles consistently.

3. If a style is always or often followed by a paragraph of another
style (eg every Picture is followed by a Caption), then set the "Style
for the following Paragraph" appropriately. This helps users do the
right thing.

If you haven't already read them, the following are very useful:

Creating a Template – The Basics (Part I)
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Customization/CreateATemplatePart1.htm

Creating a Template (Part II)
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Customization/CreateATemplatePart2.htm

And, there's a quick overview of styles (including reasons to use them)
at http://www.microsoft.com/office/using/column14.asp

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word
Melbourne, Australia

 

[Stefan Blom]

In my opinion, paragraph styles provide the best way to
format documents in Word. Direct formatting, such as bold
or italic, should be limited to emphasis of important
words or phrases.

Paragraph styles allow for easy reuse of formatting, which
ensures consistency throughout documents. And if you ever
need to modify the formatting for multiple paragraphs, you
only need to do so once, in the style definition. With
direct formatting, changing the appearance of, say, all of
your top-level headings could be very time-consuming.

Please note that you don't need to create your own styles;
Word provides a large number of predefined styles that you
can modify to suit your needs.

For more information about styles, in addition to Word
help, also see:

http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/TipsOnStyles.html

Stefan Blom

 

[Chip Orange]

Yes, this does; thanks.

In our case, the items under discussion were both B and C, so it sounds like
we *should* make a style for them.