How to set the style
All word processors have some default styles, typically called ‘normal’, ‘body
text’ or ‘default’ and if you start typing then you will be employing
one of these. But if you want paragraph or section headings to look different,
just highlight the words and look for the style (normally on the top menu bar,
near where you set the font) and choose it.
Changing the way styles look
If you do not like a style you can change it. You will need to look for the
‘modify’ button. Then look at the style-settings: not only do they have the font
size etc but rules for space above and below, what to do if there is a section
break for a new page, and very many other options.
You make the changes and most word processors bring up a new screen or tab for
each of the settings. When all the changes look right, and there is a useful
preview screen, look for a button or tick-box that asks if it should
automatically update this style. It is best to select the update option or your
existing styles will look different, which rather defeats the purpose.
You will find you need to experiment but modern software provides a good
preview so you can see impact of the changes your are making before saving
them.
Creating a new style
If you want the captions for images and tables to stand out from the
background text, you can define a caption style using a different font or bold
text. Likewise for quotations that you are using in your writing. This can be
invaluable for academic work or if you are writing performance scripts. To make
a new style, you could should select to base it on an existing style as this
means that some of the basics such as ho to treat orphan line and paragraph
breaks are already set. Then you modify it, and rename it before saving it.
TIP: If you find a style that has some neat effect that you like, and this
can often happen if you paste content from another source such as the web, see
if you can identify the settings within the style.
When to do it
Logic says you should start as you mean to go on. But a better approach is to
get the content into the document before you worry about the styles. In the next
paragraph the reason why style you have already set can suddenly change, is
explained!
If you plan to gather a lot of chapters into a book, you could go through each
file to make sure the styles were consistent, but that is hard work. Much better
to merge all of the sections or files together, and then sort out the styles. It is a
good idea to delete styles you do not want, such as ones that are imported when
you paste web material into a document. Removing the style does not remove the
associated text. Once you have removed the unwanted or duplicate styles (e.g.
body text, body text 1, body text 2 etc), you can work you way through your book
to apply the styles you need.
One way to ensure you apply styles to everything is to select the whole
document, (ctrl-A) and apply the default style to absolutely everything. That way you will have a
consistent base style, as all spurious effects will have been removed. Then
apply the special style to heading and quotes.
What goes wrong
If you are cutting and pasting from other documents and especially from
e-documents, such as a web page, it might bring along a lot of exotic styles.
You will see these on the style list which grows whenever these are imported
along with pasted text (unless you use the ‘paste without formatting’ option).
If these have the same name as an existing style, it should not overwrite the
pre-existing style, but add another version. Nevertheless, it does happen that
existing styles are changed when you insert some new text, which is why it is
worth building the document before you sort out the styles.
When this happens, you can just remove these unwanted styles (although you might
like some of the formatting they offer – so check first) by deleting them. The
text that uses this style will remain and adopt the default style.
Why bother?
Text is increasingly being distributed, and read, in an e-format rather than
printing. Printers are clever but not half as smart as ereaders or browsers.
Printers are more forgiving as their range of options are limited. Ereaders are
much more discerning. This is good and bad news.
There is a real risk that inconsistencies of style will be revealed when the
text is converted into XML.
So it is well worth polishing up your style.
See also building a table of contents where certain heading styles are used to
compile the contents. And since e-documents do away with pages, the contents are
converted into links so that the user can navigate your book.
Style sheets for your writing
