I’m so embarrassed. I just wrote a series of posts about accessing styles in Word and, silly me, I know darn well that too many folks out there really don’t know squat about styles.
Even I was afraid of styles when they first started to appear in the early, clunky, text-mode word processors of the last century. That’s because you must have an epiphany before you recognize how styles save you time.
epiphany |iˈpifənē| A moment of sudden revelation or insight.
Consider the typical word processing user. They type. They format. They format as they type, or they format after they type. Either way, they don’t create styles, they just format on-the-fly.
There’s nothing wrong with on-the-fly formatting. Well, until you get into this situation: Suddenly you discover that not all the document’s headings are the same size. On the first page the headings are 16-point Arial Black. But then, when you started working on the document the next day, you used 14-point Cooper Black. You didn’t notice the change until you printed the document and your roommate (who was only glancing at the document to be polite) pointed it out.
In a panic, you go through the document, manually reformatting all the headers. Total time: 50 minutes. Odds of getting all the changes correct: 90 percent.
The easier solution is to create and apply a style.
Suppose, for example, the user originally created a style called MyHeading. Directions are found in my book, Word For Dummies, so I won’t repeat them here.
By creating the MyHeading style, you wouldn’t have had the problem in the first place. That’s because all the headings would have been formatted using the style, and therefore they would all look the same.
The beauty of using the style, however, comes when it needs to be changed. For example, had the style originally been 16-point Arial Black and your roommate suggested that 14-point Cooper Black would look better, it would be a simple, one-time change to affect the entire document. Poof! Reformatting would take about 30 seconds.
It’s only when you face a tough formatting challenge that you discover how using styles can make your life easier. It’s that epiphany thing: the light bulb comes on and you suddenly find yourself using and craving styles. It will make you more productive, stronger, thinner, and cause you have more friends and to earn more money. Who wouldn’t want that?
I take word processing styles in this way…what is the point of diminishing returns? Obviously, when writing a short letter to print out and mail (which I do about once a year maybe if that) … it just doesn’t make sense to spend the time formatting everything out. In college or high school some longer essays and papers could certainly benefit from using styles. And EVERY author should use styles–it just makes sense.
I’m a web developer so I use styles religiously in web pages. It’s called CSS there, but basically the same principles apply.
Comment by jamh51 — October 8, 2008 @ 12:41 am
Yeah, I converted Wambooli over to CSS a few years back. The quality and consistency of the pages sucked. (Well, it could still use some work.) By using a CSS I can reformat a slew of pages with just one minor change.
For me the epiphany happened when I took a stab at writing screenplays. They have a specific format with lots of styles and especially follow-on styles. When you use the styles, then writing a screenplay becomes more of a creative-thinking process instead of a formatting-chore process.
The For Dummies books also rely on styles, which are then picked up for desktop publishing to help layout the book. In fact, all page layout programs use styles and often import the same style names from word processing documents. It makes the entire ordeal of document formatting a lot easier. Ditto for the web.
Comment by admin — October 8, 2008 @ 1:12 pm