Rarely, unless it’s a short note, is a document composed of just plain old text, with all the paragraphs in the same font and font size and with the same indents and line spacing. In Microsoft Word, you can quickly add formatting to selected text, or set all the formatting for the paragraphs to give your documents a consistent and professional look. You can apply formatting whenever you want—before you type, while you’re typing, or after you’ve typed all your text.

Apply Character Formatting

1. Select the text you want to format.

2. On the Home tab, point to any style that isn’t a paragraph style—that is, one that doesn’t have a small paragraph mark (¶) at the left of its name—to preview it. Click the style if you want to use it.

   

Tip

To create a style, format your text or paragraph so that it looks the way you want, and then select it. On the Home tab, open the Styles gallery, and click Save Selection As A New Quick Style. In the Create New Style From Formatting dialog box that appears, type a descriptive name for the style, and click OK. Presto! You’ve created your own style.