Styles and Character/Font Formatting
A few Word versions ago, possibly while many users weren’t watching, Microsoft added to Word a new type of style. Before that, there was just one type of style—the paragraph style—and styles could be applied only to a whole paragraph. It soon became clear, however that a more flexible, sophisticated style was needed—one that could be applied to characters within a paragraph.
The character style was born. Using this new invention, it was suddenly possible to create styles for formatting book titles, article titles, names, phone numbers, Internet links—you name it.
Later in this book (Chapter 7) you’ll find an entire chapter on styles, but to understand character formatting, there’s a little you need to know at the outset, so please bear with me for another couple of paragraphs.
Even if you yourself never apply a style using Word’s vast array of formatting tools, two styles are always in effect: a paragraph style and a character style. To demonstrate this, display the Style Inspector by clicking the Styles Dialog Box Launcher at the bottom-right corner of the Styles group. Then, click the middle icon at the bottom of the Styles task pane to display the Style Inspector, shown in Figure 5-2. You can dismiss the Styles pane if it’s distracting.
Figure 5-2. Use the Style Inspector when you want to fully examine the styles and direct formatting in use (direct formatting is identified by Plus in the Style Inspector).
Here, the two styles applied are Normal (the default paragraph style) and Default Paragraph Font (the default character style for normal). The latter is the name of the Normal style’s default character style.
Style versus direct
I just went through that whole rigmarole so that I could explain that you have two ways to apply character formatting. You can use a style to apply character formatting, or you can apply character formatting directly. As you’re typing along, it’s really quite easy to apply bold, italic, or underlining to text. That’s called direct formatting, and often there’s no reason for you to do it any other way. After all, the goal is to create a functional document in as short a time as possible.
Given that creating and applying styles involves more thought, preparation, and work than using direct formatting, it would appear that using direct formatting works better for my twin goals of speed and functionality. However, a shortcut is only as good as the time it saves you. If it ends up taking more time, then it wasn’t really a shortcut at all.
For example, suppose each time I need to type a book title, I press Ctrl+B (bold), type the book title, and then press Ctrl+B again to toggle bold off. That doesn’t seem too onerous, right? Suppose my editor now tells me that they don’t like book titles formatted that way. Instead, they want me to use bold small caps. Now I have to change the book title references so that they match the editor’s requirements. If all book titles and only book titles were formatted as bold, I could use Word’s Replace feature to simply replace bold with bold and small caps, but what if I’ve applied bold to something other than a book title? (The chances are good that I did!) Now I’m left carefully plodding through the document looking for things that look like book titles.
Or worse, suppose I needed to correct the formatting error not in just one document file, but in dozens of files? I would have a lot of work to do, right? That Ctrl+B shortcut doesn’t seem like a very good shortcut anymore, does it?
If, instead, each time I wanted a book title, I had applied a character style named Book Title, I’d be in much better shape. That way, I could simply modify the Book Title style, and all of my book titles would obediently change. Even if the formatting “error” were propagated over dozens of different documents, I could change the definition of the style in the template on which those documents were based, use the Automatically Update Document Styles feature, and I’d be done.
The commandment is this: If the formatting is something you will need to repeatedly apply to certain categories of text (such as book titles, programming commands, jargon, etc.), create a character style and use it.
If, conversely, the use is ad hoc and not something for which you’ll have a recurring need, then go ahead and use direct formatting. For example, when I’m writing a letter or memo and want to use bold for emphasis, I use direct formatting. When I’m writing a formal report and am referring to the name of a journal and a journal article, I use a style.
Tip
To make using styles less onerous, you can assign keyboard shortcuts to them. From Word Options, click the Customize choice in the list at the left, and click the Customize button. Set Categories to Styles. Choose the style, click in Press New Shortcut Key, press the desired key(s), and then click Assign 
Close. Don’t forget to click Assign!