Ch9: Text Styles

Switching between text styles

By default, anything you type in a Google Doc is styled as Normal text.

To switch styles, place the insertion point in the paragraph that you want to change. Click the Styles menu and choose the style that you want.

Repeat this step as you move through your document. Think about the structure of your document as you choose headings. For example, it makes sense to style the title as Title, the primary headings as Heading 1, and sub-headings as Heading 2.

Changing the appearance of text styles

Once you have styles applied to your text, you can make formatting changes that affect your whole document all at once.

Select a portion of text in the style that you want to update. In our example, we are going to update our Heading 1 Style.

Make as many formatting changes as you want to the text. You can change the font, size, color, and more.

Once you are happy with the text's appearance, click the Styles menu, hover over Heading 1, and click Update 'Heading 1' To Match.

The appearance of all of the Heading 1 text in the document will update.

You can use this method to update the appearance of other Styles in your document, including Normal text.

Saving default styles

If you create a set of styles that you really like, you can set them to be the default for any new documents that you create.

Click the Styles menu, hover over Options, and click Save as my default styles.

If you don't have this option, click View, and make sure that there is a checkmark next to Show Document Outline.

The Document Outline shows all of the titles and headings in your document. Click one of the headings, and Google Docs will move to that place in your document.