How I can I style the first couple of words of a paragraph (kind of like a heading for the paragraph), without styling the rest of the paragraph which starts on the same line? And the first couple of words - the part that's styled - needs to be indented.

For example:

My Heading. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin commodo est at urna adipiscing lacinia. Curabitur est lorem, bibendum et condimentum non, sagittis sit amet diam. Donec in odio lorem. Maecenas vitae urna vel tellus placerat varius. Suspendisse non massa libero. Cras fermentum consequat nisi, faucibus porta dolor gravida et.

(Where "My Heading" has the style applied to it so it's indented, bolded, and italicized. The rest of the paragraph is regular, non-formated text.)



A paragraph style applies the formatting to everything, so that's out.

I tried to create a character style, but these don't allow you to include indenting or tabs as part of the style settings.

Any suggestions?

I just wanted to bump this very old thread as I'm revisiting the issue and never did find a solution. I'm now using Word 2007 and have the same problem. Any suggestions?

I should add that I am able to apply a style to the first couple of words by highlighting them and assigning the style. But certain settings of the styles, like indenting, do not get applied. Also, although styled words that are part of a longer sentence do appear in my Table of Contents, they do *not* appear in the Document Map (even though I've asked it to show all headings.)

hi foxtrot,

Actually, this is quite easy to do, using what's known as a Style Separator. See:
http://word.tips.net/T003855_Creatin...e_Heading.html
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/285050

Basically, all you need to do is to create two paragraphs in the two Styles you want to work with - each containing the content relevant to that Style, then press Alt-Enter in the first paragraph.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Paul - Exactly what I was looking for! Thank you.