Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 1, 2024)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365
If you work with styles quite a bit, you already know that the there are two types of styles you generally work with in a document: character styles and paragraph styles. (Word also allow you to define table and list styles, but they are not used as often as character and paragraph styles, and thus are beyond the scope of this tip.) As their names imply, character styles define how individual characters should appear, while paragraph styles are more comprehensive and define how entire paragraphs should appear.
Word includes quite a number of built-in styles that you can use for your documents. Some of these are defined as character styles, but the majority of them are paragraph styles. The general rules by which style application is governed are as follows:
Remember that these rules are general in nature. It is not beyond Microsoft to modify the rules, ever so slightly, from one version of Word to another. You can verify (or modify) the rules in your version of Word by simply setting up a document with some test text and trying out the scenarios that are recounted in the rules above.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11623) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: How Word Applies Styles.
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