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It’s easy to format text in Google Docs, but mastering paragraph styles will take your word processing to the next level. Find out how to use styles and customize them to your exact requirements.
What Are Paragraph Styles?
Paragraph styles are predefined collections of formatting that you’re able to apply to a block of text. For example, you can choose a Heading style that makes the font bold and increases the text size.
Paragraph styles are dual-purpose; they:
Paragraph styles let you create more maintainable, better-structured documents. Using paragraph styles, you can—for example—change the size of all your headings with a single action, rather than changing every heading manually. You can alsouse them to generate a table of contentsor document outline.
The concept of a paragraph style is common among word processors, although terminology varies. They may be called simply“Styles” (Microsoft Word), “Document Styles” (Canva), or “Paragraph Styles” (Pages, Google Docs).
How Do You Use Paragraph Styles in Google Docs?
Google Docs doesn’t give you a huge selection of styles to choose from, limiting you to just a Title, Subtitle, and a few headings.
It may seem that Google Docs only gives you three headings to work with, but there are actually six in total. Once you’ve used Heading 3 in your document, Heading 4 will become available, and so on.
How Do You Change a Paragraph Style?
So what happens if you don’t like the existing look of a paragraph style? Well, you can change the formatting of each paragraph style with a simple process:
Note that Google Docs shows you a preview of each paragraph style in the dropdown menu, so you’ll see your changes reflected there.
Paragraph styles are a simple feature, but once you start using them, you’ll wonder how you ever created good-looking documents without them.
