What Styles in Word are for

I wrote about formatting at the paragraph level here on my other blog about writing which isn't about writing so much anymore but may be one day again. I've not mentioned it on this blog yet, but its something every writer should know and do. Because GGP is small, I don't really pass up the tab ridden, hard indeted pieces or the ones that are even more creatively formatted. I did that in the beginning, but GGP is small and very specific in it's content needs. Also I've learned how to remove tabs withing four clicks since I wrote the posted linked above. Still a lot of people don't know how to do that and, unless you know what a thing that you want to do is called, finding how to do said thing via Google isn't exactly easy. In fact a lot of the things I know now that I didn't know then were things I stumbled upon wile looking for other thigs. Such it was with using Styles in Word.

Either enough people use styles to put it on the home menu or Microsoft belives its that import or a little of both. Eitherway, talking about Styles in this way shows my past ignorance. If you are thinking well duh, congratulations. However, based upon the submissions I get, formatting for publication is still a mystery to most writers. And truth be told using styles for submissions is kind of advanced. If your thinking of self-publishing more than a few books or starting a niche` market publishing company like GGP you have to learn this.

So what are styles? You have heading styles. This would include things like the title of the book, the chapter headings or story sections. Then you have body style which alows you to set the paragraphs of a novel or story. You can set your quote styles and more. As a writer submitting short content to magazines, you could set up styles based on the submission requirments.

To start learning how to set your own  styles, you can do a Google search "How to use Styles?" Or some such. However, from my personal experience, I had to have an pretty good understanding on formatting at the paragraph level before Styles and the tutorials made sense.