Month: October 2019

Mixing styles and direct formatting causes some of the biggest headaches in using Styles in Word by causing inconsistent and incoherent behaviour. Updating the style will inconsistently overwrite any direct formatting.

For example, a simple document with two styles: “Heading”, which is Helvetica size 12, and “Body” which is Times size 11. In the course of preparing the document, the writer decides to insert a quote and indents and italicises some Body text.

The writer does this manually, directly formatting the text. The document now has some paragraphs of “Body” without any direct formatting, and some other “Body” paragraphs that look quite different.

The writer now decides to change the font to Charter. Depending how this is done, all paragraph level direct formatting (such as indenting and italics) may be lost. Alternatively, the writer decides that italic Helvetica looks good, and decides to change the Body style to now be italic. Depending how this is done, it may cause the previously italicised text to stop being italic.

Expand this to working with a long, complex document with a heavy mix of styles and direct formatting, and it is disastrous.

Frustratingly, Word does essentially nothing to stop a user adding direct formatting to a styled document.

The exception – emphasis

The one exception to this is adding emphasis, though direct formatting to one or more words within a paragraph. Word tends to preserve this formatting without problem.

Why use styles?

There are four main reasons to use styles.

Consistency – Proper use of styles allows your document formatting (and other characteristics) to be consistent throughout the document. A paragraph with a style on the second page of a contract will have the same formatting as a paragraph on the 60th page of the contract.

Editability – A document made with styles is much easier to edit and modify after the fact. Changing the indenting, or typeface is simpler and more reliable in a styled document. It is relatively simple and safe to experiment with different structures and appearances in a document. Thanks to the first factor, these changes will be consistent throughout the document

Features – Word’s styles enables many features that are either unavailable, or not practical with direct formatting. For example the automatic table of contents maker can be used without styles, but it is more practical with styles. Styles can ensure a contract’s schedules always starts on a new page. Styles can tell Word that particular paragraphs are in different languages, affecting spell and grammar checking.

Numbering – Word handles numbering and multi level lists separately from styles, however they are most effective when they are used together. Competent and efficient numbering is essential to many legal documents.

Why should lawyers use styles?

More than most professions, lawyers work with complex documents that require consistency and precision. Without the benefits of styles, these complex agreements are likely to have inconsistent indenting, or mis-numbering (or worse, hand-numbered paragraphs). This may mean inserting a clause into a contract requires renumbering the whole document or manually changing the cross references.

Word has two ways of formatting text:

• Direct formatting; and
• Styles.

Direct formatting embeds the formatting alongside the text. Each paragraph of text holds its own formatting information. It is simple and, well, direct.

Styles separate formatting from the text. Styles group characteristics. Paragraphs are then assigned a style. , automatically apply the style’s characteristics. Updating the style updates the paragraphs with that style. Applying a style to a new paragraph applies the characteristics to that new paragraph.

Direct formatting is simple to understand and to use, however it falls down with longer, or more complicated documents. In particular:

• As each paragraph contains its own formatting, if there is need to change the formatting of a document, every paragraph must be changed separately.
• It is difficult to ensure consistency across a document. It is very difficult to ensure that a heading on the third page has the same formatting as a heading on the tenth page of a document.

Styles solve both of these problems. Changing a style’s formatting will apply that formatting to all paragraphs with that style. Similarly, if a paragraph on the third page is the same style as a paragraph on the tenth page, they will share their formatting.

For better and worse, Word allows direct formatting and styles to mix. A single paragraph can have a style as well as be directly formatted with the direct formatting overruling the style. This can be powerful, but it can make using styles confusing. By default, Word will apply direct formatting instead of changing a paragraph’s style. This can mean that a careless Word user can quickly sully the most beautifully styled documents with direct formatting without realising it.

For example, a document has two styles: a Heading style with Helvetica size 12; and a Body text style with Times, size 11. Taking a Body text paragraph, and changing the font to Helvetica, the size to 12, will not change the style of the paragraph to Heading, it will simply apply all that formatting as direct formatting to that paragraph.

What styles are not

It is also worth stressing what styles are not. Styles are not the blue headings in Word’s ribbon. The blue headings are examples of styles, but can give a false impression of how styles should be used. The power of styles is not to allow people to find the appearance of a style they like, but rather to create and modify styles as needed.

Styles are also not just how text looks, but also how it works. Styles affect many aspects of text function including spacing, how text flows from one page to another and the language of text.

I felt compelled to make this website after years of encountering legal documents with broken and inconsistent formatting.

Too many people using Microsoft Word do not know how to use styles to make their life easier, and their work better. Trying to make complex documents in Word without careful use of styles is frustrating, and in some cases futile. Unfortunately Word does little to help, creating a false impression of what styles are, and often tricking people into using them incorrectly.

Legal documents are necessarily precise. In language as well as presentation. Inconsistent indenting or numbering can materially change a document’s interpretation. Styles are the best way to ensure the presentation of a Word document is consistent and precise.

The purpose of this website is to help people use Word styles to improve their documents. This website has a particular focus on legal documents, but it should be useful to anyone using Microsoft Word.

Along the way, this site will also detail many of the ways that styles fail, and how to cajole Word into doing the right thing.