[Klaus Linke]

There are many other opinions... My "best practice" suggestion is
to stick with "Normal" as the default (body text) style.


wrote:
Won't there be an issue when I need to make changes to the Normal
style? For instance, when I add spacing below paragraphs, it also
affects my headings.


Hi Dennis,

That's an inheritance issue. You don't have to base your headings on
"Normal" if you don't want to.
Admittedly, if you do make changes to "Normal", they'll usually affect a lot
of other styles.

In Word 2007, it will be a problem even with the default settings, because
Normal will have modified line spacing and "space after" anyway.

Klaus