A collaborative editing system defines operational transforms for transforming conflicting operations on styles of the text of the document. The operational transforms ensure that local copies of the document will be consistent when it is in a quiescent state. The operational transforms are defined so that most conflicts can be resolved based on analysis of a remote operation and a local operation only. Certain conflicts, however, cannot be resolved based solely on analysis of the local and remote operations themselves. Such a conflict is referred to as a “definite conflict.” The collaborative editing system resolves definite conflicts by designating one of the computer systems as a distinguished computer system and giving priority to its operation. When a definite conflict arises, then the local computer system and the remote computer system recognize the conflict and resolve the conflict in favor of the operation of the distinguished computer system.