APA Style
If you study or write in a scientific field, you probably have to use the 5th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. You don't need to buy templates to easily produce an APA-formatted paper. Set up Microsoft Word to conform to APA style, use a citation engine on the Web, and papers can be a piece of cake.
Let's change a few things that you can, to conform to APA style. You will fix these things one time and save them as the new default format that the Word program on your computer will continue to use forever and ever unless you change them again. The default format is the way Word automatically sets up your documents.
APA requires 1-inch margins all around the paper, right? Just nod your head and say yes. With MS Word 2002/XP or higher open, go to File--Page Setup. Click on the Margins tab. Change the numbers in the left and right margin boxes to 1 inch (the normal default is 1.25 inches). The top and bottom margins should already be set at 1 inch--if they aren't, change them. Be sure portrait orientation is selected, and under Preview it should say "whole document." Now, click on the button in the bottom left corner that says "Default." A pop-up box will ask if you want to change the default settings for page setup. It will inform you that this change will affect all new documents based on the NORMAL template. Since that's what you want (trust me on this), click "Yes." That's all there is to it--now all your documents will automatically have the requisite 1-inch margins all around.
Next, go to Tools--Options and click on the Spelling & Grammar tab. About halfway down you'll see a section dealing with Grammar. "Check grammar as you type" and "check grammar with spelling" should be checked. Under "Writing Style," select "Grammar & Style." Click the Settings button in this section. You will see a list of three things under "Require." The first one says "Comma required before last list item." In the pull-down menu beside this item, choose "Always." For the next one, "Punctuation required with quotes," choose "Inside." For the third one, "Spaces required between sentences," select "1." Click OK, and then OK again.
Now, you just have to pay attention to all the red and green squiggly lines and do something about them. We'll talk more about that later. Enough for now.
Let's change a few things that you can, to conform to APA style. You will fix these things one time and save them as the new default format that the Word program on your computer will continue to use forever and ever unless you change them again. The default format is the way Word automatically sets up your documents.
APA requires 1-inch margins all around the paper, right? Just nod your head and say yes. With MS Word 2002/XP or higher open, go to File--Page Setup. Click on the Margins tab. Change the numbers in the left and right margin boxes to 1 inch (the normal default is 1.25 inches). The top and bottom margins should already be set at 1 inch--if they aren't, change them. Be sure portrait orientation is selected, and under Preview it should say "whole document." Now, click on the button in the bottom left corner that says "Default." A pop-up box will ask if you want to change the default settings for page setup. It will inform you that this change will affect all new documents based on the NORMAL template. Since that's what you want (trust me on this), click "Yes." That's all there is to it--now all your documents will automatically have the requisite 1-inch margins all around.
Next, go to Tools--Options and click on the Spelling & Grammar tab. About halfway down you'll see a section dealing with Grammar. "Check grammar as you type" and "check grammar with spelling" should be checked. Under "Writing Style," select "Grammar & Style." Click the Settings button in this section. You will see a list of three things under "Require." The first one says "Comma required before last list item." In the pull-down menu beside this item, choose "Always." For the next one, "Punctuation required with quotes," choose "Inside." For the third one, "Spaces required between sentences," select "1." Click OK, and then OK again.
Now, you just have to pay attention to all the red and green squiggly lines and do something about them. We'll talk more about that later. Enough for now.
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