Microsoft Word for Student (and Faculty) Writing

 

Kristin B. Gerdy

Brigham Young University

   

I.                   Using Word Features and Customizing Word to Improve Efficiency and Quality

 

A.                Word Revision and Commenting Features

1.                 The “Reviewing Toolbar” (View, Toolbars, Reviewing)

2.                 “User Information” (Tools, Options, User Information)—identifies the reviewer for the document's author

3.                 Making Revisions in your document

a.            Setting “Track Changes” options (Tools, Options, Track Changes)

b.            Making revisions—“Track Changes” button, inserting text, deleting text, changing formatting

c.             Navigating through and accepting and rejecting proposed changes

4.                 Working with Comments

a.                 Inserting comments

b.                 Clipboard extending software—making more effective and more consistent comments

        1.       ClipMate (www.thornsoft.com)

c.                  Viewing inserted comments

d.                 Managing comments and revisions of multiple reviewers (Show pulldown menu and reviewing pane)

e.                 Printing with comments (“Print What?”)

5.                 Pedagogical value of using online editing and revising tools

 

B.                Multi-color highlighting—an aid for organization

 

C.                Inserting common symbols—(Insert, Symbol) special characters and customized short-cut keys

 

D.               Customizing Toolbars (Tools, Customize, Toolbars)

 

E.                Spell and Grammar Check

1.                 Setting your options (Tools, Options, Spelling and Grammar)—setting spelling, grammar, and style parameters

2.                 Spell and Grammar as-you-go

3.                 Manual spell and grammar check

 

F.                 Autocorrect and Autoformat

1.                 Autocorrect Options (Tools, Autocorrect Options)

2.                 Customized Autocorrect entries (e.g. [c] can become ©)

3.                 Deleting some autocorrect entries (e.g.(c) as © can be a problem when dealing with code sections)

4.                 Autoformat Options (Tools, Autocorrect Options, Autoformat and Autoformat-as-you-type)

 

G.               Page numbering, section breaks, and page breaks (Insert menu)

 

H.               Keyboard Short-cuts for common functions (e.g. Ctril-X for cut, Ctrl-C for copy, Ctrl-V for paste, Ctrl-S for save, Shift-F5 returns to the last place you made a change or typed in a document before it was saved, etc.)

 

I.                   Document properties: statistics and word counts (File, Properties) and (Tools, Word Count)

 

J.                 Find, Replace, and Go to

 

K.                Comparing documents with “legal blacklining” (Tools, Compare and Merge Documents)

 

 

II.                 Creating Document Templates

 

A.                Setting page format—margins, page numbering, etc. (File, Page Setup) (Insert, Page Numbers)

 

B.                Defining text styles—main text, heading styles, etc.

 

C.                Designating common elements for the document

 

D.               Saving the template (.dot rather than .doc format)

 

E.                Using the template to create a new document

 

 

III.              Automated Tables of Contents and Tables of Authorities

 

A.                Create pages for the tables

 

B.                Insert section breaks

 

C.                Generating a Table of Contents (Insert, Reference, Index and Tables, Table of Contents)

 

1.                 Using Heading Styles to create a table of contents

2.                 Manually marking a table of contents (Alt-Shift-O to mark)

3.                 Updating the table (View, Toolbars, Outlining, Update TOC)

 

D.               Table of Authorities

1.                 Marking citations for a table of authorities (Alt-Shift-I to mark)

2.                 Creating a “short form”

3.                 Defining and generating the table of authorities (Insert, Reference, Index and Tables, Table of Authorities)

4.                 Updating the table

5.                  Printing without coding (File, Print, Options, deselect Hidden Text)