Have you got style?

Lately I’ve had the privilege of editing a range of super interesting documents, on different topics, in different formats, and destined for different audiences.

For documents prepared in Microsoft Word, one common variable is how the styles pane is used; and I remember well from my own experience that getting to grips with this isn’t always easy. But styles are super powerful tools, and it’s good practice to begin any new document by defining the styles you want to use. Although they can also be added in later this can sometimes cause hassles and conflicts in the document that require a lot of patient rechecking.

Styles are particularly useful for large documents (like theses) with lots of nested headings and different types of text (references, quotations, figure captions or tables). They can also really help you ‘see’ the overall organisation of your text more clearly. And using styles throughout your document makes generating and updating a table of contents really quick and straightforward.

There are a bunch of really useful tutorials online, and if you’re in the academic environment your research or student skills group, or academic library, may have information on using styles effectively and efficiently.

Definitely worth a short investment of time!