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Please consult your school or reading committee for the specific formatting requirements that apply to your paper and adjust the following directions where needed. These instructions were written using Word 2013. If you use a different version of Word - especially a version of Word for Mac - your options may be found in a different place, though they will almost always go by the same name. Visit support.office.com to learn more about any setting you cannot find. |
Page Outline and Quick Links
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Paragraph Marks
Paragraph marks can be helpful to see when something is not responding to formatting the way you expect it to. These can be turned on and off by clicking the paragraph marks symbol, 
, in the Paragraph group on the Home tab of the ribbon.
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Page numbers
Table of ContentsWord has a feature which will use heading styles from your document to automatically create a Table of Contents. Self-paced courses:
Articles:
FootnotesYou can watch videos or download entire courses about working with footnotes in Word here:
Articles with instructions can be found at the following links:
Section BreaksIf you are saving your entire thesis or dissertation as one document, you will need to use section breaks to allow you to format the first page of each chapter properly. Information about this feature can be found at the following links:
Note: You will want to use "Next Page" section breaks between chapters. You can follow the instructions at Number pages differently in different sections to number the pages for each section of the document. Remember to use the "different first page" option! BibliographyThe following information may be helpful when you are ready to create your bibliography:
CaptionsYou can read how to add captions in Word in this article (applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016). Save as PDFFollow these instructions to save your Word file as a PDF. |
Miscellaneous Tips
- Learn about using styles to save yourself time formatting your chapter titles or subtitles.
- Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016: Customize styles in Word
- Word 2016 for Mac: Customize styles in Word 2016 for Mac
- Be cautious copying and pasting text in Word, even from one Word document to another
- To clear all formatting on selected text, on the Home tab, in the Font group, choose Clear All Formatting.
- To clear all formatting on selected text, on the Home tab, in the Font group, choose Clear All Formatting.
- Watch your white space: What you see as empty, Word may read as information
- To start a new page, use the Insert>Page Break option (or CTRL+ENTER on the keyboard) rather than hitting Enter multiple times
- Remember to save constantly as you work, and to save copies of the updated file(s) to all of your backup locations after each time working on your document
- Don't worry about page numbers or your Table of Contents until you are mostly finished writing
- You can use PDF-XChange Editor, found in CloudPC, to combine multiple PDF files into one PDF document (see "Using PDF-XChange Editor", above)
- If you feel more comfortable hiring someone to do the formatting for you, consider hiring a professional editor. Be certain to ask if they can handle formatting during your exploratory conversations with them.
Reviewed June 5, 2023