MS Word is probably the most popular writing tool and its usage is widespread. As most of you probably know, every then and now a new version of MS Office appears and with every version you need to spend a bit of time to learn the new tricks and additions to the software. Although it’s been around for some time now, not all MS Word users have mastered MS Word 2013 yet. If you’re among them, you may be interested to learn some handy tips from experienced users, especially if you have some school paper writing to do.
Since we usually rely on different resources to write a research piece or other types of documents that we write in MS Word, it is often necessary to include a list of resources, books and other works you used during your writing process. To add citations, references and bibliographies in MS Word, you’ll find these simple tips helpful.
Follow these straightforward steps to create a reference in your Word document:
Go to References tab, and once you click on Manage sources, the Source Manager window will pop up.
On the left side you can see the list of available sources. If you need to find a list placed in another folder, click the Browse button to search for the right list. On the right side of the window you will see the Current list. There you can copy sources you already have by clicking first on the chosen source from the left side and then clicking the Copy button, in the middle of the Source manager window. Not only can you copy an already existing source, you can also edit or delete it if you no longer need it. Of course, you can also add a new source. All these buttons, Delete, Edit, New are placed just below the Copy button.
If you choose to create a new source, one more window will pop up. First choose the type of source, then fill in the bibliography fields. Some of the data you can cite are: author, source name, title, number of pages, year of publishing. When writing the name of the author, you can click the Edit button to insert more names. This is useful when the bibliography you want to cite has multiple authors.
If you want to add more information about the chosen bibliography, just tick the box Show all bibliography fields and you will be able to add information such as volume, publisher, date, URL etc. Once you are finished, just press OK and your source will be added to the list. However, if you have changed your mind, just click Cancel.
On the top of the Source Manager window you can see the Search option which will save you time if you already know what reference source you are looking for. You can also sort the sources by title, author, tag and year.
At the very bottom of the same pop-up window, you can take a preview look at your citation.
After you finish adding new or adding and editing old sources, close the window and insert the chosen citation. To do that, again go to the References tab and Insert citation. As the citation has already been added to the library, it will come up right below the Insert citation button.
If you want to add the page number of your cited text, first select the cited text in the document, insert a citation and highlight it — then right-click with the mouse, click edit citation and the window will pop up asking you to enter the page number. Once you are finished, press OK.
At the very bottom of your document, you should add the bibliography. To do that, first click on the part of the document where you want to add the bibliography, again go to the References tab, then Bibliography and choose the References you used. And that’s it!
