Defining Styles

Styles are key to the underlying power of Word. They allow you to consistently define how your text should look throughout a document or a series of documents. There are a number of ways in which you can define styles, but the way you use them will depend most heavily on the version of Word you are using. To define a style in Word, simply follow these steps:

1. Display the Home tab of the ribbon.
2. Click the small icon at the lower-right corner of the Styles group. Word displays the Styles task pane at the right side of the screen.
3. If desired, you can choose one of the pre-defined styles that appear in the list of available styles. In many cases, these can save you a great deal of work for common treatments of text.
4. If you picked a pre-defined style, move the mouse pointer over the top of the style name, click on the down-arrow to the right of the style name, and then click on Modify. If you want to define a style from scratch, click on the New Style button in the lower-left corner of the task pane. Either way, you see essentially the same dialog box that allows you to set the attributes of the style. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Create New Style from Formatting dialog box.

5. If you are defining a new style, make sure you specify the name and type of style you are creating. You can also indicate if this new style is based on (derived from) an existing style.
6. Click on the Format button to make changes to the actual formatting attributes assigned to the style. The types of formatting available depend on whether you are working with a paragraph or character style.
7. When you are done setting the formatting attributes, click on OK to close the dialog box. Word updates the style list in the Styles and Formatting task pane, if necessary.
8. Close the Styles and Formatting task pane, if desired.

Once the style is defined (or an existing style modified), you can use your style anywhere you like within your document.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (5946) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Defining Styles.