Hello, my name is Erin.
I’m a professional copy editor who shares writing tips for the real world on this channel
and on my blog at erinwrightwriting.com.
Today’s tutorial shows how to create headings in Microsoft Word.
More specifically, we’ll look at how to create headings using Word’s styles.
Then, we’ll look at how to customize those styles to your preferred font, font size,
alignment, and color.
I’ll be using Word for Office 365, which is currently the same as Word 2019.
The steps are the same in Word 2016 and similar in Word 2013 and Word 2010.
Before we begin, let’s briefly discuss the importance of using Word’s heading styles.
You can make any text in Word look like a heading by using a large font size.
However, you won’t have access to several important features if you use a large font size
rather than Word’s official heading styles.
For example, Word’s heading styles help you perform the following tasks:
Create an automatic table of contents. Create bookmarks in a PDF using Adobe Acrobat.
Use Word’s outline feature. Use Word’s Navigation pane.
Most importantly, screen reading software can identify your heading hierarchy
based on Word’s styles.
If you only use a large font size for headings, people with vision impairment
who use screen readers will have less information about how your document is organized.
Let’s begin by creating headings using Word’s default styles.
In the next section, we’ll customize those styles.
To begin, select the Home tab in the ribbon.
Then, select the text you want to turn into a heading.
Select the appropriate heading level in the Styles group.
The selected text will be formatted with the new heading style immediately.
Word includes nine heading levels, although only a few will appear in your Styles group
when you open a new document.
Additional heading levels will appear after you use higher-level headings.
For example, Heading 4 will appear after you use Heading 3.
When you’re finished, press Enter on your keyboard to move your cursor to the next line.
The heading formatting will automatically turn off.
Finally, save your file to save your new heading.
Now let’s customize heading styles in an individual Word document.
There are many ways to change styles in Word.
For the purpose of this tutorial, we’ll stick with the basics: font, font size, emphasis,
which are bold, italic, or underlined, color, alignment, spacing, and indentation.
Note that you can also change heading styles by choosing a different theme or template.
We’ll cover themes and templates in separate tutorials
because they can change all the styles in a document, not just headings.
To begin, select the Home tab in the ribbon.
Then, select the Styles dialog box launcher to open the Styles pane.
You can also use the keyboard shortcut Alt+ Ctrl + Shift + S to open the Styles pane.
Now, select the menu arrow to the right of the heading you want to customize.
And then select Modify from the drop-down menu.
Make all necessary formatting changes in the Modify Style dialog box.
I'll be changing my level two heading to Times New Roman with a 16 point font.
Then, select Only in this document to ensure that your customized style
is limited to your current document.
Also ensure that Automatically Update is not checked.
If Automatically Update is checked, you won’t be able to edit the styles of individual same-level headings
When you’re finished, select the OK button to save your style changes.
The Modify Style dialog box will close automatically, and your changes will be applied to all existing
text using the heading style you just customized.
Finally, save your file to save your new custom heading style.
The corresponding blog post for this video along with many other writing tips appear
on erinwrightwriting.com, which is linked below.
Feel free to leave me a comment if you have a question about Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat
that you’d like me to address in the future, and please subscribe to my channel and give
this video a thumbs-up if you found it helpful.
Thank you so much for watching!