There are a number of different styles in Word. A style is a set of formatting instructions that can be applied to your text. These help to create consistent and well formatted documents.
The most commonly used styles are headings. These styles make text bigger and bolder, emphasising the text to show the start of a new section in a document. Heading styles come in different levels; heading level 1 is for main titles, heading level 2 is a sub section, heading level 3 is a further sub section, and so on.
To mark text as a level 1 heading, position on the text and press Control + Alt + 1 (or Alt Gr + 1).
To mark text as a level 2 heading, position on the text and press Control + Alt + 2 (or Alt Gr + 2).
To mark text as a level 3 heading, position on the text and press Control + Alt + 3 (or Alt Gr + 3).
Also heading styles have other super powers.
If you mark your section titles throughout your document as headings, you can create a table of contents in a matter of seconds (Alt + S, then T, then Enter).
And, by using heading styles, you will make your document much more accessible to screen reader users. This is because screen reader users will be able to list and jump to the different sections of your document based on the headings.
Apply Heading Styles in Word
posted in: Shortcut of the Week
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David Goldfield
Thanks for posting these handy shortcuts. I wanted to add that you can also press alt+shift+right arrow to increase the heading level or alt+shift+left arrow to decrease the heading level.
You can remove a heading by first moving to the heading that you want to remove and then press shift+ctrl+N (think of N for NO Formatting or NORMAL text.
Finally, these keyboard shortcuts work in Outlook as well as Word.
sahlyons
Thanks David, the Control + Shift + N is the next shortcut on my list!