In computing, style refers to the overall appearance or design of an object or method of accomplishing a task. In word processing, styles are sets of text formatting characteristics such as font size, color, and alignment. There are two kinds of styles: paragraph styles, which affect the whole paragraph, and character styles, which affect the painted text. By using styles, you can quickly change the look of headings on all of a websites pages at the same time or format a document consistently and professionally without having to reformat every page separately.

To modify an existing style in Microsoft Word, you can right-click the style you want to adjust and click "Modify style". In the "Modify style" box, you can change the characteristics to those you desire, and then click "OK". If any text in the open document has this style applied, it should automatically update to the new settings. To create a new Quick Style, you can format text in a document to how you want your style to appear, click the expand button below the scroll bar on the right side to get a list of style options, and click "Save".

Using styles in Microsoft Word helps keep a consistent appearance for your document and, in some instances, will help with document structure. When styling text in a Word document, its best to create a style with the specifications for how text should appear or use a pre-existing style. Its important to use the appropriate style for a given text item, such as using heading styles for document headings and body text styles for body text. To view all the styles available for use in Word, you can open the "Styles" pane and change the display settings to view all the available styles in Word. To change the definition for a style in Word, you can right-click the style you wish to change, click "Modify", make formatting changes as desired, and click "OK".