When Arlene begins typing a document, the text starts out in Normal style. She frequently types short bits of text with no punctuation at the end. When she presses Enter a couple of times to move to a new line, the style changes to Heading 1 with different font and color (of course). When it happens she backspaces and the text reverts to her default font and style. She wonders why Word is doing this.
Believe it or not, this is a built-in feature of Word. In its never-ending quest to be as helpful as possible, Word tries to anticipate how you want your text formatted. If you type in a paragraph that contains a small number of words (typically five words or less) and you don't put a punctuation mark at the end of those words, then the program—as soon as you press Enter—assumes you are entering a new heading and applies a heading style to what you entered.
Here's how you can turn off that feature of Word:
Figure 1. The AutoFormat As You Type tab of the AutoCorrect dialog box.
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2019-03-06 12:07:25
Jonathan Warshay
The Built-in Heading Styles checkbox is not checked but the behavior still persisted, so I found this solution:
Press Alt+Ctrl+Shift+S to open the Styles pane.
Right-click on Normal and choose Modify.
In the Modify Style dialog, there was "Style for following paragraph" which contained the value "Heading 3."
Change the value to "Normal."
(see Figure 1 below)
Figure 1. Modify Style dialog box
2015-06-06 14:49:58
Arlene Grabowski
Wow, such a simple fix to such a frustrating issue. I wondered if it wasn't one of those well-intentioned helpful formatting codes from our friends at MS, so there we have it. I just didn't know how to describe it in a few words! Allen, you're a lifesaver, and we're all so fortunate to have your very helpful and informative newsletters. Thanks so much and enjoy that vacation. You earn it every day.
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