Tired of having one document for your title page and another for the rest of your document? Tired of pulling out your hair while inserting footnotes? Well, you don't have to. Below you will find some simple instructions to help you format your term paper all in one file and to save money on those hair transplants.
You will cover 5+1 lessons:
Lesson 1 - Seeing is believing: how to show your formatting marks
Lesson 2 - First impressions: creating the Title page a la SEBTS / SECWF
Lesson 3 - And the rest of the story: formatting the rest of the pages
Lesson 4 - 1, 2, 3 ... let's number all our pages
Lesson 5 - Footnotes, footnotes ... lots of footnotes
Lesson Misc. - How does she expect me to do that? A list of more tips ...
So ... ready to start? Well, open a
New document in MSWord.
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To understand what is going on and to better know what you are doing in MS Word, let's get in the habit of showing your formatting marks. To do this click on the paragraph mark symbol on the standard toolbar: Now you will be able to see all your formatting marks (marks which by the way, will not print).
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Page breaks are yesterday's tool for separating two pages. Meet your new best friend: section breaks! Section breaks are at the heart of this method of pagination for a term paper. They will not only allow you to easily adjust your margins, but, in combination with headers and footers, will allow you to insert page numbers a la Kate. So let's get right to it ...-
Go to the menu bar and press Insert, and then Break. -
In the Break dialog window under Section break types press Next page and then click on OK. -
Your first page will look as follows: -
So what have we done so far ... well, you have divided your document into two sections. That means that your document now is actually two documents in one. The first section can be formatted anyway you want it without affecting the other sections. Your title page, that is section one, needs a 3" top margin so go ahead, set the margins ... -
First of all position your cursor before (to the left of) the Section Break marker on the first page. -
Now, go to the menu bar and press File, and then Page Setup. -
In the dialog window under Margins set the Top margin to 3" and the Bottom margin to 1.6". Now you might be asking yourself why should I set the bottom margin to 1.6" when the bottom line of my title page should be at 2". What happens when you set the bottom margin at 2", your bottom line will be at 2.3" from the bottom; setting it at 1.6" allows you to have a bottom line 1.9" from the bottom, which is a lot closer to the required 2". -
Now finish off your title page by putting all the information required on it. I suggest that you set this page to be double spaced. To do this go to the menu bar and press Format, and then Paragraph. In the dialog window under Spacing set the Line Spacing to Double. Now insert all the required information remembering that the A Paper line needs to be at the center of the page: that is theoretically at 5.5", but practically at 5.6". -
Congratulations you are now finished with your Title Page!
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| | Now that the Title page has been created it is time to find out how we format the rest of the document. -
Now ... position your cursor on page two. You will remember that according to 14.10 in the Turabian manual, the first page of your paper, which is considered a new major section will have a 2" top margin, while the rest of the paper according to 14.2 will have a 1" top margin. You could get around the setting margin issue by adding several paragraph breaks, but, as we will see in Lesson 4, that would not help you with page numbers. -
So, since the first page is different from the other pages, it has to be a different section. -
Go to the menu bar and press Insert, and then Break. -
In the dialog window under Section break types press Continuous and then OK. -
What you have done is make the current page (the first page of your paper, but in reality page two) a section by itself, that is section two. The rest of the document is now section three. The trick here is to realize that everything you do before this section break affects only section two, and everything you do after this section break affects section three. -
Position your cursor before the section break -
Go to the menu bar and press File, and then Page Setup. -
In the dialog window under Margins set the Top margin to 1.9" (because of the section break taking up space a 2" setting will result in a 2.1" top margin), the Bottom margin to 1", and also make sure that the Left and Right margins are set to 1". Click OK. -
Position your cursor after the section break -
Go to the menu bar and press File, and then Page Setup. -
In the dialog window under Margins set the Top margin to 1", the Bottom margin to 1", and also make sure that the Left and Right margins are set to 1". Click OK. -
Now that you are done formatting the Page, we need to format your paragraphs. Go to the menu bar and press Format, and then Paragraph. In the dialog window under Indentation set the Special to First Line and the By to 0.25" (this will indent the first line of every paragraph by about 5 spaces, see 14.4 in Turabian). Also in the dialog window, under Spacing set the Line Spacing to Double. Click OK. -
Except for page numbers, which will be discussed in Lesson 4, you are done formatting your document. Do remember that any other chapter or sections (such as a Bibliography, for example) needs to follow the 14.10 Turabian rule. Thus when you are done writing your paper insert a next page section break, and then repeat what you have just done above.
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What I am about to show you will NOT work if you have not set up your paper into separate sections, so if you did not read Lessons 1-3, go back and read them now. Never ever ever use Page Numbers from the Insert menu again. To insert page numbers we will now work directly with our headers and footers. -
Thus the first thing we need to do is to show our headers and footers. Go to the menu bar and press View, and then Header and Footer. This not only will show you your header and your footers, but will automatically position your cursor in the header of the page you are currently working on. -
Also, you should now see the Header and Footer toolbar: -
You might have notices that one button on the Header and Footer toolbar is shaded. This button allows you to control how the header (or footer) of each section links to the header (or footer) of the previous section. When it is shaded, you will see the words Same as Previous, at the top right hand corner of your header (or footer). This means that the header (or footer) for this section will be like the header (or footer) of the section before it. Since this is NOT what you want, click on the button. Now the button is no longer shaded and the words Same as Previous no longer appear at the top right hand corner of your header (or footer). -
You must perform the same action with all the headers and footers in your paper. Word has three buttons that will facilitate your movement: Switch Between Header and Footer for a given section Show Previous takes you to the previous section Show Next takes you to the next section
BEFORE YOU DO THAT, if you have not yet written any of the text of your paper (which is probably the case if you have been following this tutorial from the beginning), be forewarned that right now you will not be able to see Section 3. So either wait until you have written some text to insert the page numbers, OR insert a page and a half of paragraph marks in the body of your paper. This will allow you to see Section 3 so that you can insert the page numbers correctly (steps 5-8 below). Once done inserting the page numbers (after step 8), you can safely erase the paragraph marks without loosing the formatting you just did. -
Once all your header and footers are disconnected, it is time to insert your page numbers. I suggest that you start by positioning yourself on the first text page, that is the page after your title page, to insert your first page number. Thus position yourself in the correct location, that is that is the Footer of Section 2, and press the Insert Page Number button. -
You will most likely find out that the number that has just been inserted is a 2. Now you really want a 1 on this page, so to change this you will have to format your page numbers by pressing the Format Page Number button. This will open a dialog window where, under Page numbering you can set Start at to 1 and then click on OK. Now you will notice that your page number changed from a 2 to a 1, just what you wanted! Make sure this number is centered according to Turabian 14.9, and you are done with section 2. -
Now position yourself in the Header of Section 3, and inset a page number by pressing the Insert Page Number button (you only insert it once for the whole section). Don't forget that since section three is the rest of your paper (excluding bibliography or appendices), the page numbers need to right justified according to Turabian 14.9. -
You have now successfully inserted page numbers. Double check that there are no page numbers anywhere on the title page, or at ten top right corner of the first page, or at the bottom of the succeeding pages. If that is the case: CONGRATULATIONS!
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Now that the whole paper is formatter, your last challenge is inserting footnotes and formatting them, and since by now you have become a MS Word expert, let me introduce you to some neat features of MS Word.-
To insert footnotes, position your cursor where you want to insert your footnote and then go to the menu bar and press Insert, then choose Reference, and then Footnote... . -
This will open a dialog window. In this dialog window under Location, set Footnotes to Bottom of Page. This will allow you to match rule 14.15 in Turabian. Then press Insert. -
Rule 14.13 in Turabian specifies the rest of the formatting for footnotes. Here you have a choice, either you format every single note, one at a time as you insert them, or you learn about Styles and Formatting. I will assume that you would rather learn than incessantly format footnotes over and over, so let's do it! -
The trick to doing this only once is to get it set up from the start, so right after step 2. above, before you type in any text, do the following: go to the menu bar and press Format and then Styles and Formatting.... -
This displays the Styles and Formatting Task Pane. Here you will see, in the Formatting of selected text window, Footnote Text, right click on it and choose Modify... -
This will open a dialog window. At the bottom left hand corner of the window click on Format, and choose Paragraph... -
This will open another dialog window. Under Indentation set Special to First line and By to 0.25" (this indents the beginning of the footnote about 5 spaces). Also under Spacing make sure Line spacing is set for Single and set After to 10pt (this automatically puts a blank line following the footnote). Click on OK. -
Before you close the Modify Style window, make sure you know whether your professor wants the footnotes in 12pt font or 10 pt font. As a general rule, the college requires 12pt and the seminary 10pt, but this varies from professor to professor. Currently the font is probably set to 10pt, if this is what you want, then go to step 9. below, if it isn't, at the bottom left hand corner of the Modify Style window click on Format, and choose Font.... This will open the Font dialog window in which you can pick the font size you desire. When you are done click OK. -
Finally click OK on the Modify Style dialog window and you are done. -
To insert any other footnote all you have to do are steps 1. and 2. above. -
In the next lesson I answer some frequently asked questions, which might interest you, so go take a look!
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How do I ... Bibliography The first thing you should remember is that the Bibliography is a new chapter, and thus needs to be formatted as so (see step 13 in Lesson 3). The secret to formatting the rest of the Bibliography correctly is in the Format, Paragraph option of MSWord. Here are some simple instructions on what to do: -
Before you press return after your first source, go to the menu bar and press Format, and then Paragraph. This will open a now familiar dialog window. -
In Indentation set the Special to Hanging and the By to 0.25" (this makes the first line flush and the rest indented 5 spaces to follow rule 9.8 in Turabian). Also under Spacing set the Line Spacing to Single, and After to 12pt (this will make your entries single spaced and automatically place a blank line after each entry to follow rule 9.8 in Turabian). When done click on OK. -
That's all folks! Block QuotesThe secret to formatting a block quote is in the Format, Paragraph option of MSWord. Here are some simple instructions on what to do: -
Make sure that your cursor is in the paragraph you want to format. -
Go to the menu bar and press Format, and then Paragraph. This will open a now familiar dialog window. -
In the dialog window under Indentation set the Left to 0.25" (this will indent the whole paragraph by about 4 spaces, see 5.30 in Turabian). Also in Indentation, depending on what 5.32 in Turabian prescribes, you might have to set the Special to First Line and the By to 0.25". Finally don't forget to set this paragraph to single spacing: under Spacing set the Line Spacing to Single. When done click on OK. -
That's all folks!
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