In Microsoft Word, the term style refers to a collection of formatting commands that are put together as one and given a name. To apply a style, simply select the text you want to format or position the insertion point in the paragraph you want to format and then select a style in the Style list box on the Formatting toolbar. When you apply a style, all the formatting settings in the style are applied at once. Styles in Word come in four types:

• Character: This formats the selected text within a paragraph, even a single word or alphabet.(This might cause style corruption)

• Paragraph: This Affects all the properties associated with a paragraph’s appearance, such as text alignment, line spacing, borders and shading. Paragraph styles can include character formatting.

• Table:  This gives a consistent facade to table borders, colors, shading, alignment and fonts.

• List: This changes thealignment, numbering / bullet-ed components and fonts used within lists.

You can create, use, and modify the four types of styles in the same basic manner and you can access all style types in the Styles and Formatting task pane, (Select Format à Styles and Formatting) the Style list box on the Formatting toolbar and the Style dialog box. Before you start customizing your documents using styles, you should take a look at the collection of built-in styles provided with Word.