Using Styles, Quick and Easy

As I’ve said in previous posts, styles can make your document look better and they save you time. For example, to apply the Heading 1 style you just click in the heading (anywhere in the heading, you don't even need to select the text), and then click Heading 1 in the gallery of styles.

That’s pretty quick, and very helpful when crafting that school report or important document, but I find that it’s even more efficient and less of a distraction from my writing to apply styles using keyboard shortcuts.

Word has built-in shortcut keys for applying Heading styles and the Normal style.

• Heading 1: Alt-Ctrl-1
• Heading 2: Alt-Ctrl-2
• Heading 3: Alt-Ctrl-3
• Normal: Ctrl-Shift-n

You can promote a heading paragraph to the next-highest level by typing Shift+Alt+Left Arrow. You can demote a heading paragraph to the next-lowest level by typing Shift+Alt+Right Arrow.

If you, like me, suffer from keyboard shortcut memory overload, try using the Apply Styles task pane. This way, you only need to remember one keyboard shortcut.

Type Ctrl+Shift+S to display the Apply Styles pane.

And then begin typing the name of the style you’d like to apply. When you see the style’s name displayed, press Enter to apply it.

You can give a style an alternative name so it’s even easier to choose. In the Apply Styles task pane just add a comma after the style name and then add the alternate name. For example, I like to rename the Heading styles. I change Heading 1 to Heading 1, H1, and so on for all the Heading styles. Then all I need to do is type H2 instead of having to type the full name of the Heading 2 style.

-- Ron Owens