How to use multiple styles within a single paragraph in MS Word

Question

Is it possible to use more than one style in a single paragraph in MS Word? Ideally, I would like each new paragraph to start with an outline number, then a bold/underlined heading, followed by unstylized text.

E.g.,

1. Section One. Regular body text goes here.

When I attempt to use more than one style within a paragraph, the entire paragraph appears to automatically change to whatever style I select from the drop-down menu.

If this question is better suited for another StackExchange forum, I'd appreciate a nudge in the right direction. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The only way you can achieve this is through the use of Character styles. Character styles are intended for small portions of text like captions and footnote referencing. You can use a paragraph style for your main paragraph text and then apply the character style to the 'Section One' text.

For further reading see here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Style-basics-in-Word-d382f84d-5c38-4444-98a5-9cbb6ede1ba4#bm2a

Answer 2

Use a style separator. It's explained at http://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/complex_documents.htm#Style_Separator

The link will land in the middle of web page where you will see a graphic and explanation of what you are trying to accomplish.

Answer 3

I rewrite condo and association documents from photographed pictures of those documents. Although my versions may not be legal copies, they are more granularly organized and searchable.

For those instances in which the original text says something like:

20.1 Determination of Common Expenses. The Association, through its Board of Directors, shall ...

I have a style, Heading 3, that in this case is bold and numbered, while the subsequent physical paragraph is neither. I accomplish this by separating the Heading 3 style text from the rest of the physical paragraph using a hidden paragraph mark:

• Hit Enter/Return to create a paragraph mark, then select only the paragraph mark and change its Format to Hidden [Alt+o>f, toggle Hidden].

This separation paragraph mark solves styles' requirement for headings to be in their own paragraph, and allows the heading to be on the same line as the rest of the paragraph when printed or saved as a PDF file.

When Show/hide is toggled ON, paragraph marks and hidden text are displayed; when toggled off, these disappear and the pages render as they will be seen when printed.

I've used this "inline styles" method since Word 2000; now in Word 2010.

Answer 4

I know it's a long time since the original question was posted, and there is already a brief reference above to the beautiful (virtually unkown) feature in WORD called the "Style Separator" which allows you to separates multiple styles on the same physical line.

This has a really big advantage over the character style solution proposed earlier as it is effectively an end-of-paragraph without the line feed. One powerful consequence of this is that you can append text in a non-heading style to a heading, thereby extending the heading with 'supplementary' information, but not including the supplementary information in the Table of Contents.

I've added "Style Separator" to my Quick Access toolbar. In the customise dialog, select "All commands" and scroll down to "Style Separator" then put it into the the Quick Access toolbar. Hey presto - you're ready to go!

At the time of my writing this reply, there's a demo of the feature on a youtube clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iviwxx95RbA.

Answer 5

Would this allow me to create a table of contents that only displays the "Section One" but not the body text?

It depends on what you want to appear where. Rather than styles or style separators, you could use some nested fields, roughly as follows:

1. { SET t1 { SEQ h } }{ SET t2 "Section { REF t1 \Cardtext \Firstcap }" }{ REF t2 \*Charformat }{ TC { REF t2 } }. your paragraph text.

where you apply the formatting you want for "Section One" to the " R" or the REF t2 field. These fields can be saved as an autotext and re-used, but you will need to update the field results (e.g. ctrl-A then F9) before updating the ToC field, which could be like this: { TOC \f \h \z }

Ideally you would just be able to use { SET t1 "Section { SEQ h \Cardtext \Firstcap }" }{ REF t1 \*Charformat }{ TC { REF t1 } }, or something even simpler, but I think the SEQ fields will misbehave if you do that.