Applying Styles
First things first: if your document is coming in for editing, you do not need to worry about the document formatting. We are happy to do it for you. If you are going to try, then it is best to do it properly or things will actually take longer to fix than if you just submitted an unformatted document.
“Styles” are a way to apply the same formatting to the same types of text across a document. When styles are applied correctly, changing the style itself will change all instances of that text throughout the document. It’s a powerful tool. Here’s how to use it.
Start by downloading the appropriate template from Spark. When you open it, you should see something like the following:
On the Home tab of the ribbon, you’ll see a list of styles (outlined in green). If you click the small icon in the bottom-right corner of that panel (outlined in red), a new panel will open with the full list (follow the red arrow).
In the template itself, you’ll see names in blue in square brackets. These are the names of the styles. You can just click on a line in the template (like the [Title of Bulletin] line) and start typing and the correct style should be automatically used. If you need to apply a style after the fact, just put your cursor anywhere in the paragraph and then click the style name in the list.
What’s important is to never manually format the text, except to maybe italicize the title of a document. Everything else, including bulleted lists, should be created using the appropriate styles.
Again, we wish to emphasize that the editors are happy to do the formatting for you. We can’t write your document, but we can make it look right. So authors should focus first and foremost on the content. If you encounter any problems, feel free to ask an editor.