Special Edition Using® Microsoft® Office Word 2003

Understanding and Using Word's Default Styles

You're using styles whether you know it or not.

Word actually contains more than 100 built-in styles. When you display a new document and begin entering text, Word enters the text using the Normal style, Word's standard style for body copy. (By default, Normal style is 12-point Times New Roman, left-aligned, single-spaced, with an outline level equivalent to body text.) Similarly, whenever you use automated features such as AutoFormat, Tables of Contents, or Indexes, Word applies built-in styles in many places to ensure overall consistency.

All of Word's built-in styles are designed to work together, creating documents that are consistently formatted, if somewhat ordinary-looking. These styles are ...