Direct formatting is no offense, neither against us, nor the great deity of computing, nor criminal law. We will still encourage the use of styles because it helps you work efficiently and make a consistent output, and it may benefit people you collaborate with.
The purpose of formatting is to make parts of your content stand out in some way, depending on type of content. E.g. chapter headings are set with a larger and/or bolder typeface. List items are indented, possibly marked with bullets or numbered. Side notes/digressions perhaps with a frame around them or a different background color.
For some types of content, you may also want to summarize. Headings collected to table of contents. Keywords to an index. This can be automated by the use of "metadata".
While the use of styles can be thought of as an added level of abstraction, learning to set up and use styles is not particularly difficult. When you start using them, they will help you to keep the appearance of your text elements consistent. Some kinds of metadata, defining document structure, can also be assigned by styles.
If your document is a page or three, you have no trouble handling this by hand. If you have 200 pages it is harder. If you decide that headings should be centered and underlined, and subheadings indented and green, you have a significant workload ahead of you. Or you can modify the Heading 1
and Heading 2
styles and all is well. Heading styles are also marked with a particular outline level, so headings are automatically collected to the ToC.
How you choose to work is up to you. If you create documents in collaboration with others, your choices in this field will also influence each other's work. Also, if you submit your work to professional handling (e.g. print/publish), results may be less predictable.
As simple and as complicated as that...
If using styles is a problem, if understanding the difference between Enter and Shift+Enter is a problem, you, probably, should not use computers and would be better off sticking to pen and paper.
@gabix : Perhaps you judge too harshly. Myself, while I have never tried to write a book using Writer (where Styles might be most appropriate), I have used Writer for many things and, yet, I have never used Styles, only manual formatting. The OP raises an interesting point -- What is wrong with using manual formatting, and why so much emphasis on Styles.
@LeroyG
No never. Nothing speaks against direct formatting.
It is just that with longer documents the use of styles saves work and gives a better overview of the formatting used.
It only becomes problematic when direct formatting and formatting with styles is used.
With a 50 page document, can you still remember where which formatting was used?
If you only use direct formatting, there shouldn't be any problems either.
@ve3oat
Yes, it is. Since I'm actually an advocate of styles, I still use direct formatting for short documents.
I hope everyone will be happy with what they do. As long as you know what you are doing, there shouldn't be any problems.
Of course it's not an offense. It's a problem.
People tend to believe that using direct formatting is easy. And keep coming with problems caused by using that, problems that are sometimes very hard to fix and very easy to prevent by using styles. But telling that is taken as offense by them.
The fact is that you have to be very advanced user to use direct formatting efficiently.