Creating a New Style

You can create a new style in two ways: by creating it from a paragraph or building it from the ground up. To do a thorough job, build it from the ground up because styles you create this way can be made part of the template you are currently working in and can be copied to other templates.

Creating a style from a paragraph

Follow these steps to create a new style from a paragraph:

1. Click in a paragraph whose formatting you would like to turn into a style and then Right-click and choose Styles> Save Selection As a New Quick Style.
   You see the Create New Style from Formatting dialog box.
   
   
   
   You can also open this dialog box by choosing Save Selection As a New Quick Style in the Quick Styles gallery.
   
   
2. Enter a name for your new style and then click OK.
   A style you create this way becomes a part of the document you are working on - it is not made part of the template from which you created your document.

Creating a style from the ground up

If you want to make a style available in documents you will create in the future, make it part of a template and build it from the ground up. In the Styles window, click the New Style button (you can find it in the lower-left corner of the window). You see the Create New Style from Formatting dialog box, as shown in Figure below. Fill in the dialog box and click OK.

Here is a rundown of the options in the Create New Style from Formatting dialog box:

Name:
Enter a descriptive name for the style, one you will recognize in the Styles window and Quick Styles gallery.

Style Type:
On the drop-down list, choose a style type.

Style Based On:
If your new style is similar to a style that is already part of the template with which you created your document, choose the style to get a head start on creating the new one. Be warned, however, that if you or someone else changes the Based On style, your new style will inherit those changes and be altered as well.

Style for Following Paragraph:
Choose a style from the drop-down list if the style you are creating is always followed by an existing style. For example, a new style called Lesson Title might always be followed by a style called Lesson Intro Paragraph. If that were the case, you would choose Lesson Intro Paragraph from this drop-down list.

Formatting:
Choose options from the menus or click buttons to fashion or refine your style (you can also click the Format button to do this).

Add to Quick Style List:
Click this check box to make the style's name appear in the Styles gallery, Styles window, and Apply Styles task pane.

Automatically Update:
Normally, when you make a formatting change to a paragraph, the style assigned to the paragraph does not change at all, but the style does change if you check this box. By checking this box, you tell Word to alter the style itself each time you alter a paragraph to which you have assigned the style. With this box checked, all paragraphs in the document that were assigned the style are altered each time you change a single paragraph that was assigned the style.

Only in This Document/New Documents Based on This Template:
To make your style a part of the template from which you created your document as well as the document itself, click the New Documents Based on This Template option button. This way, new documents you create that are based on the template you are using can also make use of the new style.

Format:
This is the important one. Click the button and make a formatting choice. Word takes you to dialog boxes so that you can create or refine the style.