Thank you. I am well aware of John's contributions.

John Korchock - Best Practices - much about PowerPoint, some about Word - Start here and look at Older Posts
I have a number of bookmarks and like you have found that sometimes things move around. The link above is simply to the last post on the site and the way I titled it in my bookmarks.

Here is one on styles: Managing Styles with XML editing by John Korchok
It does not have the border trick you demonstrated.

I also have his book OOXML Hacking.