Styles prevent document corruption (i.e., unable to open a document, a document not printing or paginating properly) by reducing the amount of formatting code embedded in a document- Some formatting features in Word are crippled or disabled without styles. Want to build a table of contents or update a document’s paragraph numbering? It’s a long, tedious process without Styles.
- Creating a document with styles saves time in the editing process. Reworking a document’s formatting will take minutes instead of hours using styles.
- Using styles creates smaller sized documents. Uploading documents to a web portal such as a court, which may imposes document size limits, this can be valuable. (A Partner once told me he spent three hours one night trying to make a document smaller so it could be uploaded to a court’s website. If he had used styles, the document would have been small enough to file!)
- Identifying parts of your document is easier using Styles. For instance, the Document Map view functions using styles. It allows you to quickly jump to one part of a brief with a quickness and speed that will amaze you.
- Employing styles in a document saves you time by freeing you from revisiting each and every paragraph to reformat. When you update a format for a style that is used many times, it cascades the changes through the whole document at once.
- Styles create documents with consistent formats (all the titles and subheadings look the same, etc.). This makes it easier to cut and paste from one area of the document to another and from one document to another.
- Collaboration with others is easier when you use styles because you provide everyone with the same set of formatting choices. Because everyone uses the same styles editing the final document goes much smoother and quicker.
- Converting a Word document into a PowerPoint presentation can be done easily by using styles.
- You already use styles. Items such as document indexes, hyperlinks and tables automatically come with pre-defined styles.
Anita’s Top Ten Reasons For Using Styles…
Published on August 8, 2009 by Anita Evans
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