Let's go back to the beginning first...to understand 'styles' there are multiple links such as http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/stylesms.html that will define styles and how they are used. Typically, styles are not used to bold or underline one particular character within a paragraph...the style applies to the whole paragraph.

It would behove you to take a look at the link provided (and other links available within that link) to learn more about styles and other MSWord attributes.

OK, thank you for the interest Jim. Let's back up a bit.

I believe I understand how to use styles for paragraph formatting. My task is: I had been successfully bolding certain characters in certain words through CTRL+B keystrokes.

I did not see new styles being created to reflect that, but alright, I do not know how Word handles bold in individual characters.

As I tried to explain, if I have the sentence: See Spot run.

If I wanted to bold the letter t, I selected just the letter to apply CTRL+B for the desired result: See Spot run.

However, what has been happening to me is that I select just the letter t, apply bold, and the selection EXPANDS to create this result:

See Spot run.

I was only speculating that I had messed up a style setting. This same thing, the expansion of the selection to include 3 characters, also sometimes happens when I try to apply a true MS Word Style.

But to be clear, it happens with CTRL+B, but not CTRL+I or CTRL+U.