MS Word Legal Training - Strategically Using Character Styles

Character styles allow you to "Style" specific words with specific attributes such as Bolding, Underscore, Italic etc. Anything we find under the Font Menu can be applied to the Character Style. A good example would be a scenario where we are requested to Bold and/ or underscore all the defined terms in the document. Defined Terms are the abbreviated or nickname like terms assigned to names, companies and institutions rather than referring to the name in its full form over and over again throughout the entire document. So you might see this in a typical legal document. The Securities and Exchange Commission ("Sec") ... Other uses of Character styles take the form of changing the Font of certain company names that appear within the document. Maybe each mention of the company name is in a particular font, a particular attribute such as Bold and Italic etc. Other documents that have Preamble like Introductions that use "Whereas" to start off each paragraph may be Bolding or Capitalizing the word. This is the main point. People will sometimes use a particular character style to take care of a number of different scenarios which means that they then LOSE the ability to take care of each individual scenario without affecting the other instances that are also sharing that same character style. 1. Each individual scenario should have its own individual character style. 2. If you need to remove the attribute then modifying the style and removing it takes care of it instantly. 3. Although you remove a Character Style through modification, it is still silently marked and turning it back on through modifying takes one second. 4. Finally, if you wish remove the character style from ONE particular instance, then highlight the instance and use "Control Shift N" to strip off the character style but doing so will NOT strip off the underlying Paragraph Style. You can also use Control Space Bar to remove the Character Style from 1 particular instance. Training From An Inside Perspective www.advanceto.com www.awarenessexplosion.com MS Word Books authored by Louis Ellman Books that read like a seminar...