When texts formatted as a heading level appear in the document's TOC, there are no special characters in the paragraph to indicate lead-in emphasis applied to the text. The whole process is seamless. Word uses a new underlying feature named "linked character styles" to do this. The heading style applied to the lead-in part of the document is displayed as a heading style. But it is actually a linked character style. In Word 2002 and later versions, when you apply a paragraph style to a subset of paragraph, the following behavior occurs:
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A hidden character style is created and takes the same character properties as the paragraph style is applied.
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The character style is applied to the selection.
To view the hidden character style, follow these steps:
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Under tab, click the
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In the popup window, click
Then
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Select the text in your document and notice that exact formatting details appear in the Reveal Formatting task pane.
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Select the text that has the character style applied and notice that the text is displayed as a character style in the Reveal Formatting task pane. The linked style is displayed as Heading Char in the Reveal Formatting task pane. The actual character style remains hidden in the task pane or the Style drop-down list on the Formatting toolbar.
Any paragraph style can be used for the linked character style. A paragraph style can be created and looks exactly like the body text paragraph style, and then applied to a part of a paragraph. In this manner, the text that's used to build the TOC can exactly match the text in the paragraph, assuming the TOC options are modified to include the style for the lead-in text.