Formatting with styles in Microsoft Word

You’ve given your document its logical structure—headings, lists, paragraphs—and now want to tweak the way it looks. In addition to modifying existing styles, you can create new styles, name them and apply them wherever you want.

To start, pull down Word’s "Format" menu and choose “Style” or “Styles and Formatting.” What you will see after that depends on what version of Word you use.

In Office XP for Windows

  1. You will see a list of styles on the right of your screen.
  2. Right click a style you want to format and choose “Modify” or click the “New Style” button to create a custom style.
  3. You can make many changes to the style directly in the “Modify Style” or “New Style” dialog box.
  4. For more options, click the “Format” button at the bottom of the dialog box.

In Office 2001 or v.X for Macintosh

  1. Choosing “Style” from the "Format" menu will launch a “Style” dialog box with a list of styles you have used in your document.
  2. Select the style you want to format then click the “Modify” button near the bottom of the “Style” dialog box. Or click the “New” button to create your own style. This will launch the ”Modify Style” or “New Style” dialog box.
  3. Click the “Format” button at the bottom of the dialog box to choose what aspect of the style you want to format.

Style options

A page that looks great in your browser may fall apart in someone else’s. The simpler your formatting in Word, the more likely it will succeed on the Web. Avoid formatting options for “Tabs” or “Frame.” Most of the other options are fairly safe if your students are using up-to-date browsers, as they should in WebCT.

Block versus inline

Some styles are “inline,” which means they can apply to individual words within a paragraph. Some styles are "block level," which means they automatically apply to whole paragraphs. A heading style, for example, is block level. The best way to make a heading is to simply click once in the block of type you want to be a heading, then choose the heading level you want. The whole paragraph will become a heading. Do not try to make an inline heading. If you select part of a paragraph and choose a heading style, Word will make the selected text look like a heading, but it won't add the “h” tags you need for accessibility.

Image of Format button with option menu raised.For in-depth information on using styles, consult Word’s help menu or a good Word reference book. The following tips only address issues of using Word for the Web.

Font

Stick to common type faces like Arial, Times New Roman, Georgia or Verdana. If someone who doesn’t have the font you’ve chosen views your page, their browser will substitute a type face. Often, the substitute is something similar and not a problem. But if you use a font like Symbol or Wingdings to make pictures, some people may see letters or numbers instead. Use image files for pictures.

Use any color that contrasts well with your page’s background, preferably dark type on a light background. Avoid underlining text for the Web; people will try to click it. (You can use borders—see below—to make lines that don’t make text look like links.) Ignore Word’s font “Effects” except strikethrough, superscript and subscript.

Paragraph

The “Paragraph” options let you set block-level properties, such as the size of the space between paragraphs or whether the first line of a paragraph is indented. Avoid putting extra indentation on lists or Word may make them into a series of indented paragraphs instead of tagging them as lists in the HTML. The “Line and Page Breaks” section is of no use on the Web.

Cusor selecting a solid border. Choose one of the top three border styles.

Border

You can make lines around, beside, under or over text; or create blocks of color behind your text (Shading) in the “Borders and Shading” dialog box. Stick with one of the first three border styles: solid, dotted or dashed. Most of the fancier borders probably won’t work well on the Web. The “Options” button near the bottom of the “Borders” section lets you set the spacing between the text and the border or the edge of the shading.

Language

When you save a document as a Web page, Word includes markup that tells a browser what language the document is written in. If your text has phrases in a different language, you can let a browser or screen reader “know” by using a language style.

Suppose you have some French phases, for example. You could create a new style named, say, “french” and choose French from the list in the “Language” dialog box. After you create the style, highlight a French phrase and select “french” from your style menu. When you save the document as a Web page, that phrase will be marked with a code that identifies it as French, which can help a screen reader pronounce the phrase correctly.

Document Language

If your whole page is in a foreign language, set the language for the page, rather than use a style. In Word for Windows, pull down the “Tools” menu, choose “Language” and “Set Language.”

In Word for Macintosh, choose “Preferences” either from your “Word” or “Edit” menu. Then under “General” preferences click “Web Options.” Then click “Encoding” and choose from the list of languages.

Numbering

Be cautious with this one. Use it to change the way an ordered list is numbered or lettered, not to make fancy bullets. When you mess with lists, there’s a danger that Word will drop the list HTML code and make a series of styled paragraphs instead.