Sorry it took so long for you to get to the group, Tim, but the fact is that
if this is a document of any length with a lot of heading levels you really
would be far better off to learn to use Styles for your formatting rather
than relying on direct formatting & the frivolous piece of frippery called
the Format Painter... especially if the doc may have to be revised
periodically. What you're experiencing is quite probably just an omen of
worse to come, eventually resulting in corruption of the doc which will
render it unusable.

You first might want to have a look here:

http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/concepts/styles/

as well as the other relevant pages on Shauna's [excellent] site, and also
peruse the information here:

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting.htm

for more guidance. If you need any help on specific issues don't hesitate to
pose your questions to the appropriate group.

Hi Tim,

I have not heard of such an issue before. Which version do you use?

You didn't mention the formatting change that was made to the paragraph you
copied the format from.
Even better would be some reproducible steps to see the problem.

Does the change occur on copying, or on pasting (as your description
suggests)?

Regards,
Klaus