From the styles on the “ Home” ribbon, click the level of heading you want.

You don’t have to highlight the text, just click once anywhere in the paragraph.

Click anywhere in the block of text you want to make into a heading.

You get none of those benefits if you just make text big and bold or underlined without encoding the document’s structure with heading styles.

You can make a link in your document that jumps to a heading in another part of your document.

You can use Word’s “Navigation” side panel to see a list of headings and jump to any part of the document by clicking its heading in the list.

All the text under that heading will move with it.

In outline view, it’s easy to rearrange your document just by dragging headings.

You can instantly insert a table of contents for your document, complete with page numbers, all based on your headings.

You can easily create consistent formatting from document to document.

You will be able to change the formatting of all the headings of a given level at once.

It saves a lot of time because you can apply consistent formatting to your headings throughout your document without having to choose the font, size, weight, shading, and borders each time you make a heading.

Screen reader users will be able to skim the page by jumping from heading to heading.

Screen reader users will be able to hear which blocks of text are headings and what level each heading occupies in the hierarchy of the page.

Why Headings Matter Benefits to Students with Disabilities Don’t just make text big, bold, or underlined. Create headings using Word’s styles labeled “Heading 1,” “Heading 2,” etc.

Parts of a document