Hello. Indeed, you do need to begin to understand styles to understand what's going wrong with your TOC, and I would urge you to read up on them from whatever tutorial or library book source you may choose.

Meanwhile, your problem is common and not very serious. Very briefly, automated TOCs work by picking up designated styles from teh text. For instance, the Heading 1 style is picked up by the Level 1 TOC style when the TOC automation routine scans the docuemtn looking for headings.

A style is simply a group of characteristics, such as font, font size, line spacing, space above and below paragraphs, etc. Direct formatting, as when making a word bold, is not the same as an actual style.

In any case, the reason you are picking up whole paragraphs of text in your TOC, is becuase those paragraphs have been erroneously styled with a heading style, which is being picked up by the TOC scan. All you need to do to remedy this, is to restyle those paragraphs as whatever they should be.

There's more to this, is may be clear, but that should get you started.

Best,
Ulodesk