Special Edition Using Microsoft® Word 2000

Why Styles Are So Valuable

Styles are one of Word's most powerful timesavers, for five important reasons.

First, styles can dramatically reduce the time it takes to format a document—often by 90% or more. Second, styles can also help you make sure all your documents look consistent, with very little effort on your part. Third, if you export your Word document to a desktop publishing program (page 833), most programs can use Word styles to help automate their work. Fourth, if you need to change the way your styled document looks, you need to change only a few styles, not hundreds of manual formats.

Finally, it's much easier to take advantage of Word's powerful automation and organization features if you use styles. For example, Word can automatically ...