However, editing a paragraph with multiple typefaces, emphasis, tab changes, and automatic first line indents is another matter. There are a few major exceptions to the above observation. One is the publishing industry. Styles are second nature to newspaper publishers. Another would be a ANY office that has developed customized style libraries for their particular types of documents, AND have adequately trained their staff in how and when to invoke the various styles.
Styles CAN get the job done, but at the cost of flexibility.
For the latter, WordPerfect's Reveal Codes feature is a godsend. It allows the ultimate control . . . The user has almost no control over this extremely useful and important feature. Word relies almost exclusively on font size to get a document to fit within the boundaries specified by the user. Whether Microsoft can't or won't modify its code to match WordPerfect's capability is unknown.