Throw Away Your APA Manual and Use Word Instead
As a grad student I am constantly writing papers for pretty much all of my classes, as such I have developed a distaste for anything with APA or MLA on it. I recently stumbled upon MS Word’s ability to keep track of your citations, most importantly the ability to correctly format those citations throughout your paper, and finally the creation of a correctly formatted Works Cited page.
The guide below will walk you through the process of creating citations, managing your citations, and generating your Works Cited page. If you have any comments or questions, please post them below.
Note: I used Office 2007 on Windows Vista for this tutorial.
Before starting, open Word and lets select a formatting style.
1. With Word open, click on the References tab, click on the Style drop-down menu and choose the style you wish to use.
Note: I chose APA for this example
2. Make sure you are still in the References tab and click on the Insert Citation button, this will produce a drop-down, click Add New Source
3. The Create Source window will open. This form allows you to add all of the pertinent information for your source. Enter the available information in the highlighted fields.
Note: That you have the option to specify the type of source, the forms fields will change based on the type of source selected. In this tutorial I will be using this article on my website as a reference.
Note: Whenever you activate a field (the cursor is located in the field) an example of the formatting for that field will appear. This is very helpful if you’re not familiar with a specific style like APA.
4. Once you are done entering the information, click OK
Note: When the reference is inserted it will appear similar to the screenshot above (I used APA format)
5. Once you have added your reference to the list, you can access it from the Insert Citation drop-down located in the References tab. When you click on the reference it will automatically be added wherever the cursor is located.
Managing Sources
Aside from creating references on the fly you have the option of adding, modifying, and deleting them in the Source Manager window.
1. To manage your sources click on the Manage Sources window
2. The Manage Sources window will list all of the sources you have ever added in Word, you have the option of making them available to a specific document by bringing them over to the Current List area, you can accomplish this by clicking on the specific reference and hitting the Copy -> button. You can also remove references from either list by clicking on the Delete button, you can edit with the Edit button, and you can create new references by hitting the New button and following the steps above.
You can also preview a specific reference in the Preview section located at the bottom of the window.
Creating the Bibliography or Works Cited Page
One of the most dreaded formatting and guideline intensive areas of any paper. When you use the steps above to create your references, a Works Cited/Bibliography page is a click away.
1. Click on the Bibliography button located in the References tab and select the page you would like to use, Bibliography or Works Cited.
2. The Bibliography/Works Cited page will be inserted at the end of your document.
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