Keeping Up Your Styles

In Microsoft Word, that is.

Charlie Munger famously said that, while he’s always been in the top 5 percent of his age cohort at understanding the power of incentives, he realizes every year that he still underestimates them.

I feel the same way about styles in Microsoft Word. They’re perfect for legal documents, and it seems like I rarely talk to lawyers who use them at all. And yet, every time I use them or even think about them, I realize that I should use them more.

For those unfamiliar, styles are a wonderful Word feature where you essentially save and reuse your formatting. The button’s right up at the top of the ribbon these days under the “Home” tab. If your window is not maximized, you’ll likely see a large “Styles” button three from the right, with a nifty logo of a capital “A” and a blue paintbrush superimposed on top. If your window is maximized, you’ll probably see a whole section of the ribbon called “Styles” right in the middle.

Once you get to it, you’ll see a selection of separate styles. The defaults are usually something like “Normal,” “No Spacing,” “Heading 1,” “Heading 2,” and “Title.” If you click or hover over one of those with text highlighted, the highlighted text will change to whatever is set up as that style. The key, however, is that you can just modify those styles to whatever you want. Right-click on the top and select “modify” to set it however you like, or just highlight text and select “Update [STYLE NAME] to Match Selection.” Or, if you’re more of a fan of right-click contextual menus, just select text, right-click, and proceed with the “Styles” contextual menu there in the same way.

The great thing about styles is that the feature is perfectly built for documents that have specific outline and header formats, down to things being lined up, down to the pixel, just like briefs. And they’re especially built for situations where you want to repeat the same format across different documents, also just like briefs. It allows you to get formats just how you like them, without all the time and frustration of other solutions like format copy and pasting, or the old standby of just copying over text and rewriting it.

Styles are better than the other options since they’re not only a bit faster and a bit more efficient. They also reduce errors and make it much easier to keep things consistent across documents without even worrying if they’re off. The flipside is they do take a little more work in setting up, but that pays dividends down the road, making it well worth it.

So, sometime soon, make it your resolution to work on your styles. Get used to the format, set them up in your documents, and get used to using it efficiently. It will be a worthwhile stylistic investment.

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Matthew W Schmidt Balestriere FarielloMatthew W. Schmidt has represented and counseled clients at all stages of litigation and in numerous matters including insider trading, fiduciary duty, antitrust law, and civil RICO. He is a partner at the trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at matthew.w.schmidt@balestrierefariello.com.

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