Too many lab reports and lengthy docs in my high school career have suffered from a lack of visual hierarchy. Which titles should be bolded, underlined, italicized? What about subtitles? What about sub-subtitles? This lack of structure within the document made navigating and understanding it only that much more difficult.
In Google Docs, I’ve adopted the built-in hierarchy system of “paragraph styles” and their “Heading” formatting. To readily access these features, you can highlight your heading text and type,
ctrl+alt+num
where num is a digit 0-9. I tend to stick with 0 (for normal text), 1 (for Heading 1), and occasionally 2 (for Heading 2).
The added bonus of using Headings is that sections are automatically added in the “Document Outline”.
As often, the structuring of ideas is not just for ourselves, but for the benefit of others.
Kevin, I have used simple shortcuts for so many assignments but never came across this idea. I think this really helps in being organized and being quick at simple formatting steps. Great advice!