Customizing or creating new style

A style is a collection of formatting choices that lets you apply pre-set formatting instructions in one
click.

Word has several styles available in the Styles pane. If you don’t like the look of these styles, you can
modify existing styles or create your own.

Headings
Headings are the commonly used style in document formatting. They also allow you to use the
navigation pane. You can set and customize up to nine headings (Heading 1 to 9).

To customize a heading:

1. In the Styles pane, right-click on a heading, then click Modify.

2. Customize the formatting as desired. Click Format to further customize your heading.
3. Once you are set with your formatting choices, click OK.
Normal text
Normal text is the default style of a Word document. When you open a blank document, Word
opens the document in normal text. This is where other preset styles are based on.

You can also customize your normal text using the Paragraph settings.

To customize normal text:

1. In the Styles pane, right-click on Normal, then click Modify.

2. Customize the formatting as desired. Click Format to further customize your normal text.
3. Once you are set with your formatting choices, click OK.
Incrementing captions
Captions are concise description or explanation of an image, diagram, figure or table. Captions can
be styled to automatically increment the number as it is used. This allows you to save time in adding
captions instead of manually numbering them.

For this example, we will use the “Figure” label.

To create an incrementing caption:

1. In the Styles pane, click Create a Style.

2. Rename your style as “Figure”, and then click OK.

3. The Figure style will immediately be displayed in the Styles pane. Right-click on it, and then
click Modify.

4. Under Style for following paragraph, choose Caption.

5. To set the incrementing numbering, click Format, then choose Numbering.

6. Click Define New Number Format.

 7. In the Number format, type in “Figure” including space before the number. and then click
OK.

Adding shortcut keys to styles

Shortcut keys allow you to quickly apply a style.

To add shortcut keys to styles:

1. Right-click on the style, then click Modify.

2. Click Format, then choose Shortcut key…
3. Press your assigned shortcut keys, then click Assign.
Applying styles
To apply styles:

1. Place your cursor on the line you want to apply style on.
2. In the Style pane, click your chosen style.
3. Alternatively, you can press the assigned shortcut keys to apply the corresponding style.