Methods and systems allow style and other formatting settings to remain latent until one or more particular style or formatting settings is instantiated by a user. Data representing each latent style or formatting object is persisted in a data structure apart from the user's document. Each potential style setting or formatting setting may be set as locked for use for a given document or locked for non-use for a given document. Upon saving the document, no data is saved for the numerous available style and formatting settings in the document. When a particular style is called upon by a subsequent consuming application, that application may then instantiate the particular style or formatting setting based on the properties of that style or formatting setting available from the subsequent consuming application.