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Formatting Headings and the Document

Next, we format all the headings, colors, fonts and line spacing in the document.

Once you've used styles to format your document, it's easy to change the look of the whole document at once. In practice, we format styles.

The Design tab contains tools for editing several times in one go. It is particularly suitable for setting fonts and line and paragraph spacing.

Often, however, you want to make the layout of the document a little more specific. Here we also briefly look at how to edit styles.

Guide

### What kind of style for headings

In general, there are many opinions on styles and they are ultimately a matter of taste. The nature of the document also has a big influence on the type of styling you should use.

In general, however, we recommend avoiding headings that are in color or in all capital letters. In practice, headings in all capital letters are suitable for headings that are very short.

Another factor to consider is whether the document will be printed. Standard printers are still black and white, so colorful headings may turn a ghostly grey when printed.

For this reason, we have chosen a black and white heading style in lower case for this example. In the end, though, it's best to go with a style you're comfortable with.

Distinctiveness of headings

A common way to make headings stand out is to use a different color from body text. If we set the headings and the body text to the same color, we could highlight the heading by choosing a different font for it than for the body text. However, for the sake of simplicity, we have used the same font for the heading and the body of the model document.

Video

The Objective

After editing the layout of the document, it could look like the following.

Fonts have been set to heading styles and Normal. The font used for heading styles is the same for all heading styles, but may differ from the font used for the body text.

The document's line and paragraph spacing have been changed so that the text in the document is loose.

Accessibility and headings

Problem: I can't find the Design tab

If the **Design** tab does not appear, you are probably using a web version of Word that does not have this feature.

Switch to editing the document in the desktop version.

You can also learn about the desktop version in the extra task Desktop and web version.

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Switching to the desktop application

You can switch from the web application directly to the desktop application by clicking on the Editing button on the top bar and selecting Open in Desktop App.

Depending on the security settings on your device, you may receive a warning that an attempt is being made to open Word.

Click on the button Open in the window for the operation to succeed.

In the lower window, the text All done… appears. You don't have to react to it in any way.

One of the ways to recognise a desktop application is that it looks quite different from the web application.

But once the file has been saved in the cloud, the document is automatically saved in the desktop application as well.

You can also change the name of the document as you would in a web application, by clicking on the name displayed in the title bar.

Task: Change the fonts of your document

Start by setting the fonts to be used in the document. Although the change caused by fonts is small in principle, it will have a significant impact on the look of your document. It is worth paying attention to the font.

Task: Change paragraph spacing and line spacing

Another important factor in the overall appearance of a document is its "airiness". Sometimes you want to fit as much text as possible on one page, and sometimes you want your document to be as readable as possible. Let's put a little slack into this document.

Task: Finish the fonts and colors used in the document

You may want to further refine your styles. To do this, you can format each style separately.

In the model document, we have changed all headings to black.

Extra task: Use different fonts

Choose a specific font for the headings (e.g. Garamond, Times New Roman) and a different font for the body text (e.g. Calibri). Adjust the font size and color as needed. Ensure that the headings and body text are clearly distinguishable from each other.

Accessibility and colors

Accessibility

Recommendation: Also express in text what is shown in color

Around 5% of people have varying degrees of color blindness. In addition, colors are not relevant when reading aloud or in black-and-white or greyscale (as is often the case with printouts, for example).

The most common form of color blindness is one in which red and green are not distinguished. Therefore, for example, distinguishing between wrong and right by using only the colors red and green is a bad idea. Colors can certainly be used as an additional effect.

Recommendation: Check that the contrast is sufficient

If the colors of the text and the background are not clearly distinguishable, reading the text becomes difficult or even impossible for many people with bad vision.

In Word, the Check Accessibility function in the Accessibility group of the Review tab includes checks for sufficient contrast between text and background, among other things.

Black text on a white background is always a safe choice.

Wasn't that quick and easy? By continuing to use header styles and ready-made tools for formatting, you won't have to paint and format in multiple places. You can easily change the layout with a few mouse clicks.

You have now reached the end of this page. Do you feel that you understand? Please send a message immediately if you feel you need help. When you're done, you can go to the next page, which deals with list markers and numbering.

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