You can actually simplify this with styles. One of the hidden features is that when you hit return you can have one style switch to another.
https://superuser.com/questions/1613581/change-default-style-of-next-paragraph-after-heading
And you can make keyboard shortcuts to switch to a particular style
With this functionality i have made some cool easy to use templates for writing scripts and you can even speed up some stuff like static webpage design, although word is hardly the best tool for that.
Word is like the ultimate swiss army knife word processor: It’s not so good at anything that it should be your first choice, but comes in handy when you have to control workflow for collaborating on something. Almost everybody has access to it usually at most workplaces.
Publisher is more limiting in many more ways than word and is very old in the tooth.
I have luck using word and publisher together to make some things. Recently I worked with designers to make a workflow for creating and updating a catalog for a customer, that used excel and publisher like an extreme version of mailmerge in word.
All of this stuff is antiquated but people have access to these tools so sometimes we make stuff in them because of who is using it.