Formatting: Styles, Paragraph Control, and Page Setup
What you must understand
Formatting in a word processor splits into character formatting (font, size, bold, italic, colour, highlight), paragraph formatting (alignment, indentation, line and paragraph spacing, bullets and numbering, borders and shading), and page/section formatting (margins, orientation, paper size, columns, headers and footers). The single most important idea is that direct formatting sits on top of styles: a style is a named bundle of character and paragraph settings, and applying direct formatting overrides the style for that run of text only.
Traps to expect
- Paragraph vs character scope. Alignment, spacing and indentation apply to a whole paragraph even if one word is selected. Bold or font size applies only to the selection.
- Styles vs direct formatting. Questions often ask the most efficient way to restyle every heading. The answer is to modify the style, not to select each heading and reformat it.
- Spacing confusion. Line spacing is within a paragraph; space before/after is between paragraphs. Adding empty paragraphs to create gaps is the wrong technique.
- Section breaks. Margins, orientation and columns are section-level. Changing orientation for one page requires a section break, not a page break.
- Clear formatting removes direct formatting and reverts text to its style - it does not delete the text.
Rule of thumb
If a change must apply consistently across many similar items and survive later edits, change the style; if it is a one-off emphasis, use direct formatting. To change page layout for part of a document only, insert a section break first.
Worked example
You must make every level-1 heading 16 pt and dark blue across a 40-page report. Correct approach: modify the Heading 1 style's font size and colour; all headings update at once. Selecting each heading manually is slower and will drift out of sync when new headings are added.