What feature in Word helps ensure consistent use of styles?

The feature in Word that helps ensure consistent use of styles is the Styles gallery. The Styles gallery provides users with a collection of predefined styles that can be applied to text, making it easy to maintain uniform formatting throughout a document. By using the Styles gallery, users can quickly apply specific characteristics like font type, size, color, and paragraph spacing to headings, subheadings, and body text. This not only streamlines the styling process but also enhances the overall coherence and professionalism of the document.

Utilizing the Styles gallery also facilitates modifications; if a particular style is changed, all text using that style will update automatically, ensuring consistency without the need to manually adjust each instance. This is particularly useful in longer documents, where maintaining consistent formatting can be challenging.

While the formatting toolbar offers tools for users to manually apply styles, it lacks the structured consistency provided by the Styles gallery. The paragraph editor and text box tool do not specifically focus on style consistency, as one is intended for detailed paragraph formatting and the other is for placing text within boxed areas, respectively.