Structure of a Word document

Documents in Word have a hierarchical structure.

Different types of properties apply to different units in the hierarchy:

• Section. By default a document is a single section, but settings for margins, headers and footers, footnotes, and columns apply to whole sections, so you need a section break if you want to change any of these for only part of a document. You make a new section using Insert | Break and selecting one of the four types of “section breaks” (the choices have to do with whether you want the new section to start on a new page, and if so, where). There is no direct way to format a section; once you have a section, though, if you change “section-sensitive” formatting (e.g. page layout options) you will have the choice of applying the changes to just the current section.
  
• Paragraph. Most of the formatting you use in Word applies at the paragraph level: indents, line spacing, default font properties, bullets etc. You can apply many aspects of paragraph formatting all at once to a paragraph using paragraph styles, discussed below.
  
• Character. Some formatting attributes apply at the level of individual characters, such as the bold font in the first word of this paragraph. You can apply a set of character attributes together using character styles.

Word also recognizes words and sentences — for instance, if you double-click in the text you will select a word, and if you control-click, you will select a sentence. However, these units can’t have formatting automatically associated with them.

In addition to these parts of the main document, there are other special kinds of text which Word refers to as other “stories”. These include footnotes, comments, headers and footers, and the like. These items are stored separately from the main text and require special commands to access and edit.

Finally, customizations such as style definitions, macros and toolbars may either be stored in the document or in the document's associated template.