Cumulative Style Name Syndrome, or Beyond 'char'

[Ulodesk]

As a corporate proposal DTP for more than a decade, I have seen my share of documents with style lists that are shall, we say, interesting. Although I understand the old “char” addition to names as a result of selecting partial paragraphs and pasting in other styles, I am unable to replicate the types of style names I see in documents that were issued from a clean template and returned with “interest.” The style controls have changed since the advent of 2007 versions, and I wonder if anyone can tell me the settings among the four Advanced tab options for pasting that actually cause the accumulation of style names into a single style.



Allow me to illustrate with an example that continues to astound even my jaded eye. The company that employs me recently received a government statement of work of about 120 pages for a proposal. The styles list, after the view options had been set to remove all the local formatting, remained exceedingly long and complex, let alone about twenty “x” styles pasted in from Excel. The document’s content actually represented a need for fewer than a dozen styles. Just for fun, I decided to print out the styles list—102 pages, comprising more than 600 styles! Among them, from one of several sets of heading lists, this remarkable style name:

Heading 1,Head1,Heading apps,2,Heading 10,Heading 101,Head11,Heading apps1,Heading 102,Head12,Heading apps2,Heading 103,Head13,Heading apps3,Heading 104,Head14,Heading apps4,H1,1,Part,h1,Header 1,II+,I,SCE,H11,H12,H111,H13,H112,H14,H113,H15,H11 4

And not even a “char” to be found, unlike

Heading 2,H2,h2,Reset numbering,Heading 2 Char Char1,H2 Char Char1,h2 Char Char1,Reset numbering Char Char1,Heading 2 Char Char Char,H2 Char1 Char,h2 Char1 Char,Reset numbering Char1 Char,Chapter Title,Heading 2 Char1,Reset numbering Char1,H2 Char Char

I would truly like to know how this happens.