I have Word 2000 and have never understood how to format an  entire document
so that when I hit bullet a certain bullet type is placed at the beginning
of a paragraph.  I want to then be able to hit tab to go in a prescribed
number of inch fragments and put another type of bullet there.

I use this for typing notes.  It's basically an outline using bullets.

It seems whenever I do this by going into Format/bullets and numbering, it
works until I put 2 line returns in a row.  The bullet format is gone.

I've tried going into the Normal template and set the style, but again, once
I put 2 paragraph returns in the document, the bullet formatting goes away
or reverts to some pre-determined style that I don't know where it comes
from.

Rather than try to fix this specific problem, is there a good overview of
formatting a document that you can recommend.

Thanks.