Become familiar with both the horizontal and vertical style menus.

The horizontal menu at the top of your Word document shows some but not all of the styles. For additional styles, use the scroll bar to the right. Alternatively, open the vertical style menu by clicking on drop-down button of the horizontal menu (red circle) [Short cut: Alt + Ctrl + Shift + S]. 

The drop-down vertical menu allows you to see and edit the detail of the formatting styles, modify styles and create new styles.

Activity

Create a short 1-page document with a few headings and several paragraphs. Select part of the text and apply the custom styles to see the changes to your document. Hover your cursor over the style, e.g. Heading 1, to see what choices have been made for the font, paragraph and style.

Some notes on styles

• Normal style is the default setting for MSWord and the basis for most other styles. Do NOT use this and then modify it! Instead, select or create a style appropriate for your needs.
• Heading 1 is used for first level headings. This heading can be set up for font, size, line spacing, space before and after the heading. The font is often Arial (without serifs).
• Heading 2, used for second level headings, is slightly smaller and in italics to distinguish it from Heading 1.   
• Body text refers to the text used for the main text of your document. For your thesis, this is usually Times New Roman, 12 pt, 1.5 spacing, 10 pt space before and after (to generate a space between paragraphs).  
• Bullet 1 and 2 refers to dot points. For your thesis these are set up as with symbols and indents. Bullet 1 with a dot and Bullet 2 with a –.