When modifying the Normal Style and the Heading 1 style, which font should I specify.

I want to use Arial 12 font.



For the Normal style, do I use the regular Arial font or select the Arial Body font?

Also for Heading 1, do I use the regular Arial font or select the Arial Heading?

It's so confusing to know which one I should use.

Your help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

The (Body) and (Heading) font options basically means that you are choosing the font that is dependent on the currently selected Theme Fonts. The theme fonts are selectable via Design > Fonts. If the font name is 'Arial (Body)' then the font is going to be Arial but only because the body font in the assigned theme is Arial.

The theme fonts allow you to specify a font via a theme so that the font can be applied to lots of styles and you can change all those styles at once by altering the theme.

If you define the styles by picking the font without that theme setting then you won't have an easy way to roll out a font change to lots of styles at once.

The complication on this is the way that style settings cascade. Let's say that your styles are set up so that many styles are 'based on' a few key styles. For example, you have a style called 'Normal' that has a font assigned to it called 'Arial'. Then you have a series of styles where:
- List is based on Normal
- List 2 is based on List
- List 3 is based on List 2
- List 4 is based on List 3
Lets say that all these styles have the same Arial font assigned to them.
Now, if you modify the font for Normal, the child styles (List, List 2, List 3 and List 4) will ALSO change to the new font because their font attribute was inherited from a style with that same font attribute.

__________________
Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

You likely want to change your Theme fonts and then use the Heading+ and Body+ fonts.
See:

• Default Paragraph Font Explained by Suzanne Barnhill, MVP
• [Quick] Style Sets and Word Themes in Microsoft Word

You can apply Arial font directly but if you have Arial Body and Arial Heading, I recommend using those. That will allow you the freedom to use [Quick] Style sets if you wish.

Thanks Guessed and Charles Kenyon for your very thorough responses. Microsoft doesn't make learning Styles easy for a novice.

In the Design tab, I only created a custom color palette and using it in Heading 1. Does this mean that I have to change the font to +Heading Arial Font or the regular font will do?
Is the custom color palate that I created tied to the Office theme?

Thanks in advance.

You can use either in your Heading 1 style. I, again, recommend using the Theme +Heading font. Here are some Styles resources:

• Tips for Understanding Styles in Word by Shauna Kelly
• Why Use Word's Built-In Heading Styles? by Shauna Kelly
• Understanding Styles in Microsoft Word
• Managing Word Styles by Suzanne Barnhill, MVP
• [Quick] Style Sets and Word Themes in Microsoft Word