Word

I have been using Microsoft Word since the 1980s.

I still cannot reliably edit headings and styles.

This may sound like user error, except that the owners of this product have had roughly four decades in which they may have made this intelligible but they have chosen, with impressive consistency, not to.

Word headings are not just headings. They are formatting presets, outline levels, navigation anchors, collapse controls, numbering containers and inheritance objects, and other things I don’t understand – all pretending to be font choices.

This is why a heading can look like a heading without being one.

It is also why a paragraph can behave like a heading while looking like ordinary text.

It is why applying bold, increasing the font size and calling the thing “Heading” in your own mind achieves precisely nothing.

The relevant setting is usually not visible. The paragraph needs an outline level. The style may be based on another style. Direct formatting may override the visible result while leaving the structural behaviour unchanged. A list style may be involved. A table may interfere. The document may have inherited some ancient formatting decision from a document created during the reign of Windows 95.

There is the text you can see.

There is the paragraph object.

There is the style.

There is the style the style is based on.

There is the outline level.

There is the numbering scheme.

There is the navigation pane.

There is the collapse behaviour.

There is probably more…

So, after forty years, I have reached a settled conclusion.

It is not my fault.

It is Microsoft’s.