Linux Journal: OpenOffice.org Off-the-Wall: Style Is Everything, Right?

“Styles are the chief feature that make office suites more than
electronic typewriters. In OpenOffice.org, however, they are even
more important than usual. Most word processors offer character and
paragraph styles, but OpenOffice.org also includes frame, page and
numbering styles. Even more importantly, OpenOffice.org extends the
concept of styles to other applications. Impress, for example, has
a system of styles, whereas PowerPoint, its MS Office equivalent,
has none. The same is true of OOo’s Calc and MS Excel. Once you
understand why you should use styles and when, you’ll find
OpenOffice.org’s tools for managing and applying styles second to
none. You’ll also start to unleash the full power of
OpenOffice.org.

“Styles are the preferred way to format documents in an office
suite. The alternative is manual overrides. To use manual overrides
whenever you want to change the default formatting, you select part
of the document–for example, a page or a group of characters–and
then apply the formatting using the toolbars or menu. Each time you
want to format something, you do it individually. This style of
formatting is popular mainly because it requires no special
knowledge. In effect, it involves using a word processor as though
it were a typewriter…”

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