> > Styles aren't a good thing, they are THE thing.  If you don't know 
> > styles, you don't know Word.

Styles gives you consistency and speed. They free your head up. You do not
need to remember the format you gave to each piece of text. They are a must
in every document with two or more pages. But they need a little of
knowledge about the final desired presentation of the text. That's right.
Thinking before writing is the best you can do in most cases. You'll reach a
good knowledge about the structure of the text, and how to say the things
you want to say. So, I fully agree:

> If you want to 
> make your life easy, think a bit about how you want it to 
> look, create the styles, and work with them. 
> ...
> It's amazing how the visual consistency increases with a bit 
> of thought and structuring work. If you want people to read 
> your stuff, /thinking/ about a suitable presentation and 
> actually designing it is not something that should be 
> neglected. (Yes, that's design work. You may be able to add a 
> whole new dimension to your documentation by looking at it that way.)

A word of caution here: I've seen a lot of people fail in the design of the
presentation/formatting. Often, in early stages of the formatting learning
process (with or without styles), one feels the need to show each and every
one of the things he is learning. And, usually, that is not good for the
final document aspect.
Document formatting design is a difficult task. It is easy to try
possibilities in WYSYWIG systems like Word, but this is no guarantee of the
final quality of the presentation. There is a great amount of knowledge
needed to do a good job. And this is the reason why I'll try systems like
LaTeX. This kind of systems have the formatting job already make for you.
You get proffessionally looking text fast and easy, but you must learn how
to use a non-WYSYWIG system before. I missed the OP original post, so LaTeX
could be too much for the task.


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