Taming MS Word
Microsoft Word is a tricky beast. We constantly have students struggling with formatting, indention, tables, page numbers, and on and on. I’m presenting a workshop, especially for grad students writing theses and dissertations, to help with some of the issues that come up when trying to conform to APA Style. I am not an APA expert, nor am I a Word know-it-all, but I know something about the formatting tools they provide, and about changing and saving a Style in Word, and hey, I’m here to help.
It’s important to remember that though it seems to be a requirement, you don’t have to use Word. There are free applications that read and save to Word’s .doc format: OpenOffice and AbiWord to name just two. They don’t support all the features of Word, but they’ll all allow you to create document templates so you can write with the correct style.
See “more” below for more information and links I found helpful in preparing the workshop, and sometime next week, to download the handout. I’ll be adding to the links as I continue my research on this.
[Update] These links from Microsoft’s Office Assistance help site have the best straight information I’ve found on formatting margins, indents, and tabs in Word, so I moved them to the front page:
Microsoft Office Online
- Measure up with the horizontal ruler: Set margins, indents, and tabs
- Set tab stops and insert tabs that have leader characters
- Understanding paragraph, character, list, and table styles
- Create a Table of Contents
- Explore Tables of Contents in Word
More links below.
- Free APA 5th Edition Word Template for Word 97 or later, including an installer
- A concise guide to APA style with downloadable PDF and Word examples
- Another clear, concise guide with another downloadable template
- Ten things every Microsoft Word user should know
- Generate lorem ipsum text to practice with
- Practice text in English