STYLES AND

THEMES

DIRECT FORMATTING

The formatting we have done in this class so far is known as direct formatting. You choose the font, the size and any other desired effects, then you repeat this direct formatting process for each section of your paper. You could use the format painter, but in a long document that could be tedious and it is easy to make mistakes.

If you don't have a good eye for design, it may take some time before you create a look that you like.

Furthermore, documents that are formatted by direct formatting are difficult to update. If you want to change the look of the document, you must select each element and apply the new formatting choices.

USING STYLESThe use of styles in Word will allow you to quickly format a document with a consistent and professional look.

When you use styles to format your document, you can quickly and easily apply a set of formatting choices consistently throughout your document.

A style is a set of formatting characteristics, such as font name, size, color, paragraph alignment and spacing.

For example, instead of taking three separate steps to format your heading as 16-point, bold, Cambria, you can achieve the same result in one step by applying a built-in Heading style.

You don’t need to remember the characteristics of the style. Just select the text, and then click a selection in the gallery of styles.

HEADINGS

Among the most important built-in styles are the standard heading styles: Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, etc.

The heading styles are intended to help create a consistent hierarchy in your documents.

For example, you might use Heading 1 for chapter headings, Heading 2 for major sections within chapters, etc.

Heading 2 is meant to be a topic within a Heading 1 section. Heading 3 a meant to be a topic within a Heading 2 section.

You can choose other styles for the rest of your paper that you can be sure will look good with your headings.

There are styles for quotes and lists, and styles you can use to emphasize a point in your paper.

DO I HAVE TO USE STYLES?

It depends on what sort of document you're creating. For short documents you can get exactly what you want without using styles. For longer documents where you want consistent formatting across many pages, styles make your life much easier. Another important fact is that some features within Word, such as the Table of Contents, are designed to work best with documents that use styles.

STYLE

SETS

If you don't like the style set that is displayed in the ribbon, you can easily swap out the style set with the Change Styles button next to the gallery.

The image shows the same document with three different style sets: Word 2007 (Default), Manuscript, and Modern.

Style sets are collections of styles that are designed to look good together.

TO SWAP STYLE SETS

1

2

3Choose one

CREATE AND SAVE STYLES

Suppose you decide to change the formatting of content that has already used a style.

For example, you might restyle a Heading 2 by using a larger font size. Suddenly this Heading 2 is different from all the others in your document.

To maintain consistency, select the text you just changed, right click, choose styles and select > Update Heading 2 to Match Selection. The changes you applied to the selected Heading 2 will be applied to every other Heading 2 in the document.

If you’d rather create a new style than modifying the existing one, when you right click choose "Save Selection as a New Quick Style.

WORD'S LIVE PREVIEW FEATURE

Word's Live Preview feature works great when you're making formatting choices. Place the cursor on the first line of your document. Open up the Styles menu.

As you hover over the choices, the first line changes to match the choice. You can see what things look like before you actually click and make the decision.

Office 2007 uses Live Preview all over the place and it's a very handy tool.

THEMES

Themes come in handy when you want to make a change to the overall look and feel of your document in a few clicks.

Themes are set to work with the styles used in a document. Before you apply a theme, you need to assign styles to the elements in your document (such as Heading 1 or Heading 2 from the Styles group of the Home tab). Themes look for and replace the formats of each of the styles applied to the document elements.

Note: Your document must be in Word 2007 format (Themes are not available in Compatibility Mode).

The Style Set is MODERN Each image is a different

THEME

APPLY A THEME

Be sure to apply styles to your document first. Then you can experiment with themes. You will find them on the page layout tab.

CHANGE YOUR COLOR SCHEME

If you like the overall look of the layout and fonts, but the color scheme isn't quite right you can try many new color combinations. Click on Theme Colors icon.

CHANGE YOUR FONT

If you like the color scheme, but the fonts aren't right, you can click on the Theme Font icon in the Theme group and choose from the many font choices.

SAVE A NEW THEMEIf this document look is something that you won't be using again, there's no need to save it. However, if you've spent time getting it just right, you may want to save it so you can use it again in the future.

To save a theme, simply click the Save Current Theme option at the bottom of the drop down that displays when you click the large, main Theme button in the group. Give your new theme a name that will help you remember its purpose,

You can find many more themes from the Microsoft online gallery. This site is continually updated with new themes you can download for your own use. To access the online gallery, click the main Theme button. There, along with the option to save your theme, you'll see an option for more themes from Microsoft Office online.

THE NORMAL TEMPLATEThe NORMAL template is the set of formatting instructions that Word uses when a new Word document is opened. In Word 2007, the default font is Calibri 11. If you wish to change any of the attributes of the NORMAL template, follow these steps:

1. Click the Office button

2. Select Open

3. In the Open dialog box, click Templates

4. Double-click to open the Normal template

5. The Normal template will open so you can edit it. Make changes as you would to any Word document. Keep in mind, though, that any changes you make will be applied to all new documents.

6. When you’re done making changes to the Normal template, click Save on the Quick Access toolbar.