Instead of manually applying a paragraph style to each paragraph via Word’s menus or style list, you can use the eXtyles Style Paragraphs function to apply a set of styles from the eXtyles STS template’s paragraph styles to the document.

The efficient style palette used in eXtyles lets you quickly and easily apply the correct styles to each individual paragraph. Each of the eXtyles STS paragraph styles is mapped to the eXtyles style palette, where it appears as a button. You can quickly traverse the document and confirm or change the style of each paragraph using the convenient “Undo”, “Next”, and “Previous” buttons.

To style the paragraphs of the document:

1. Select Style Paragraphs from the eXtyles menu. Styles in the eXtyles style palette are divided into multiple groups, or tabs. The tabs on the eXtyles STS style palette include the following:

Title: covering information that appears on the title page of the document
Front: covering front-matter paragraphs
Body: covering paragraphs in the body of the document
List: covering list items
Object: covering boxes, tables, and figures
Back: covering back matter paragraphs

2. When the Paragraph Styles palette appears, select the desired tab and begin traversing the document, clicking the desired button to apply a style to the selected paragraph, or clicking “Next” to advance to the next paragraph without changing the style of the selected paragraph (see the section eXtyles STS Export Styles for more information about the navigation buttons).

The selected paragraph is highlighted in its entirety. After you click a style button to apply a style to paragraph, the highlight advances automatically to next paragraph.

You can also press the designated hot key—indicated by an underscored letter or number in the button’s label—rather than clicking with the mouse. For example, you can press the “x” key on the keyboard instead of clicking “Next”.

The “Undo” history is cleared when you click into the Word document or close the palette.

Within palette, you can use the Tab and Shift-Tab keys on the keyboard to switch between the different style tabs on the palette. The Esc key will close the dialog.

Within the palette, the Shift key will also change the behavior of certain functions. If you hold Shift while clicking “Next” or typing the hotkey “x,” eXtyles will skip all paragraphs tagged with the current paragraph’s style, stopping at the next new paragraph style. If you hold Shift while clicking the table body style for your palette, eXtyles will apply the table body style to the rest of the table.

The Paragraph Styles palette closes automatically after the document is completely styled. If you need to close the palette in the middle of processing, click the X box in the upper-right corner or press Esc. You can reopen the palette at any time, and styling will continue with the paragraph where the cursor is currently located.

After you style a document, you can easily navigate through it by jumping from heading to heading using Word’s Document Map feature. To use Word’s Document Map feature, check the box in View > Navigation Pane.

Styling Options

You can also use the Word paragraph style menu as usual if you are applying a paragraph style to just a few paragraphs. If you use this method, please keep these points in mind:

The button name on the eXtyles Paragraph Style palette is not necessarily the same as the name of the actual Word Be sure to use the correct Word paragraph style.
Word has a bug (Microsoft calls it a “feature”) in which italic or bold markup or Symbol font changes in the middle of a paragraph may be lost when styles are applied from the Word Paragraph Style menu or ribbon. This problem is especially nasty in genetics papers, in which a gene may inadvertently be turned into a protein as a result. If you use this method of styling, be sure to proof the paragraph carefully. Using the eXtyles Paragraph Style palette avoids this bug in

On This Page

Browser not supported