Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Word offers several ways to apply formatting. Direct formatting is one of those ways. But it’s not always the best option. Read on for an explanation of what direct formatting in Word is. Plus, discover a better alternative and why you should opt for it whenever you can.
What is direct formatting?
Direct formatting is where you manually apply formatting to text or an element. It means you’re applying each of your formatting preferences, individually.
So what does this look like in practice? Say you wanted to format specific text with a green, bold font. And then you also wanted to increase paragraph spacing to 18pt after the paragraph. There are several steps you’d need to take to do this.
First, you select the text and change the font colour to green. Then you apply bold font. Finally, you adjust paragraph spacing to 18pt.
What are the pitfalls?
It’s all about time.
Let’s face it, we all wish we had more time. So wherever you can save some, you should!
Now, it doesn’t sound like too much of a big deal to apply direct formatting in the example given above. What happens though if you want to format other text in your document in the same way? That’s right, you then need to take each step in the process again. Or you can copy and paste the formatting using Format Painter – this is a good shortcut to use to save time.
But what happens if you decide you’d like to change the font colour to be orange instead of green? You must follow the process again for each instance of the formatted text in your document. This can be a pain!
Then there’s the issue of maintaining consistency. This is important but almost impossible to do, especially when you’re using direct formatting in a long document.
Finally, using direct formatting stops you from being able to take advantage of other Word features. For example, you can’t generate an automatic table of contents. This is only possible when you use styles (either Word’s built-in styles or your own custom styles).
By now you should be thinking … direct formatting is (mostly) dead to me!
What’s the alternative?
Wherever you can, opt to use a style.
Styles act as a container for a range of settings. So once selected, a style applies all the required formatting in one go. And because the style stores all your settings, you can use it to also format other text (or elements) in your document. This simplifies and streamlines the document formatting process. Plus, it helps you maintain consistency in your document.
Word has a range of built-in styles you can use. And you can easily modify a style to suit your needs.
Where Word doesn’t already have a style for the formatting you need, you’ll need to create your own. But only create a new style where it makes sense to do so. Otherwise, you’ll simply be creating more work for yourself.
When should you use direct formatting?
Just about never! Having said that, there are times when you can get away with it … but only a few.
For instance, you could use direct formatting if you only need to apply specific formatting to a couple of places in your document. And where your document doesn’t have a style for the specific formatting you need.
In such a case, it may not be worth your while to create a new style. This is especially so where you don’t need to use the style elsewhere.
So using direct formatting in this kind of a scenario makes sense. It’s easy enough to maintain consistency. It’s also not too much of a hassle to reformat the text (or element) if needed.
Want to know how to apply direct formatting to text?
Find out how to apply formatting directly to text in your Word document. Remember though that the process can be quite tedious. So be sure to only ever use direct formatting when it doesn’t make sense to use a style. You’ll be glad you did!
