Why can't I change certain styles back to normal?

[Matt]

When I change some text to 'strong' or 'emphasis' in the styles tab, I can't
change it back to 'Normal' or 'No Spacing'. Why is this?

Thanks

 

[Stefan Blom]

This is because Strong and Emphasis are character styles which are always
applied on top of the paragraph style. Select the text and press
Ctrl+SpaceBar to clear any direct font formatting, including character
styles.

If you are using Word 2007, you can specifically clear the character styles
applied to (parts of) the selection: In the Styles pane (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S),
click the Style Inspector button. Click the Clear Character Style button.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

If there's any chance that Chinese is installed on your computer,
don't use Ctrl-Space (that's the Windows command to switch to
Chinese,
and Word won't override it). Use Ctrl-Shift-Z instead.

 

[Stefan Blom]

This is because Strong and Emphasis are character styles which are always
applied on top of the paragraph style. Select the text and press
Ctrl+SpaceBar (or Ctrl+Shift+Z) to clear any direct font formatting,
including character styles.

If you are using Word 2007, you can specifically clear any character styles
from the selected text: In the Styles pane (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S), click the
Style Inspector button. Click the Clear Character Style button.