18 Styles

Styles are another important element of document navigation. Styles are combinations of formatting characteristics you can apply to text in order to set its appearance. They govern things like text alignment, line spacing, and font presentation (styles, italics, boldface, and so on).

Styles for major headings, subheadings, and caption text come preset in our thesis templates. While styles provide sighted readers with the visual cues needed to understand the organization of your content, they also allow people who use screen readers to navigate through your text accurately.

An easy way to achieve a consistently formatted thesis is to use styles. When you apply the same style to text, that text will be formatted identically. For example, if you apply a Heading 1 style to each of your chapter titles, they will have an identical format. This means there’s no need to check these elements of your thesis for consistency: Word does that for you.

Assigning heading and subheading styles throughout your thesis can also clarify the organization of your content. Think of heading styles as building blocks you can use to create the structure of each chapter:

• Heading 1 serves as a major heading.
• Heading 2 is the first subheading level nested underneath Heading 1.
• Heading 3 further subdivides the content under a Heading 2, if needed.

As you move from Heading 1, to Heading 2, to Heading 3, you’ll be able to see how the information relates to each other.

Because you’ve used Styles to format your thesis, you can automatically generate bookmarks when you convert your Word document to a pdf. When you are ready to convert your thesis to a pdf, go to File, and then Save As. Choose Save as type > PDF.  Then, click on the Options button. Make sure Create bookmarks using: Headings is checked.

Additional Resources

For best practices on using headings, see Organizing Text – Getting Started with Open Educational Resources (uiowa.edu).

Digital Accessibility @ Iowa includes information about headings in its guides, “Accessibility Practices in Microsoft Word” and “Accessibility Practices in Adobe Acrobat Pro.”

The University of Minnesota provides information about the impact of headings, Dos and Don’ts, and How-to’s.