Thank you for your insights, Andrew.

Just a few points though:

1) My My_03b_Body_Other_paras is based on My_00_Body_base which in turn is based on “no style.”

Is that the same as “My_03b_Body_Other_paras based on My_00_Body_base based on Normal”?

2) I have used hierarchical style definition so that I can control the formatting of the entire document by tweaking one single style: My_00_Body_base. And this works very well.

Finally, you have written “Microsoft Word's implementation of styles is flawed.”

Does that I mean upgrading MS Office will not help resolve this problem?