The 'Styles' function in Microsoft Word can save you a heap of time & money by doing all the grunt work involved in formatting text. In your document choose Format > Style to display the style dialogue box. In the drop down menu choose to list All Styles. As you'll see, Word has a huge number of predefined styles you can assign to headings, body text, bullets, tables & footnotes.
These styles can be assigned to the toolbar as a drop down list to make them even easier to access & use. You can also modify each of the styles to suit your needs.
Once you've set them up, you simply assign a style to each paragraph by leaving your cursor in the text and choosing the style (e.g. 'Header 1') from the menu. Hey presto - you've got a heading!
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With a single click, each of your paragraphs can be given consistent formatting. Each style contains information on: |
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text alignment |  |
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tabs | |
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paragraph spacing | |
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font & size | |
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colour | |
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borders & shading. | |
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Save on Typesetting Time Whatever new styles your designer comes up with can be imported over the ones you've already assigned. This is a lot faster than scanning through the entire text to assign the styles all over again. |
| Be Consistent To ensure you're consistent you can set up your screen in Word to display the style of each paragraph in the left margin. Choose Tools > Options & in the dialogue box that pops up simply enter a value for the width of the Style Box (the default is 0, so it doesn't normally appear). Once set up, simply drag the border to a convenient size. |