Once you start showing formatting you will also be able to see and delete “Section Breaks” more easily, which brings in another bit of Word deep magic:

Settings for sections are at the end of the section. If you delete a section break, the previous section will start using the settings of the next section.

This is especially fun for the last section of the document. If you want it to use the settings from the previous section, you have to manually “copy” the settings by editing the good section and then Redo in the bad section.