Chapter 8
IN THIS CHAPTER
Working in Outline view
Creating a table of contents
Indexing and cross-referencing your work
Managing footnotes and endnotes
This chapter is hereby dedicated to everyone who has had to delve into the unknown and write a report about it. Writing reports, manuals, and scholarly papers is not easy. You have to explore uncharted territory. You have to contemplate the ineffable. And you have to write bibliographies and footnotes and maybe an index, too. Word cannot take you directly to uncharted territory, but it can take some of the sting out of it.
This chapter explains how to construct an outline, handle footnotes and endnotes, generate a table of contents, index a document, include cross-references in documents, and stitch together a bibliography.
Which comes first in an alphabetical list, “San Jose, California” or “San José, Costa Rica”? You could research the matter on your own, delving into various dictionaries and online references, or you could rely on the Sort button for the answer. Follow these steps to quickly alphabetize a list:
On the Home tab, click the Sort button.
You see the Sort Text dialog box. The Then By options are for sorting tables; they don’t concern you, because you’re sorting a list.
Click OK.
That was easy.
Outline view is a great way to see at a glance how your document is organized and whether you need to organize it differently. To take advantage of this feature, you must have assigned heading styles to the headings in your document (Chapter 3 of this minibook explains styles). In Outline view, you can see all the headings in your document. If a section is in the wrong place, you can move it simply by dragging an icon or by clicking one of the buttons on the Outlining tab. To change the rank of a heading, simply click a button to promote or demote it.
To switch to Outline view, go to the View tab and click the Outline button (or press Alt+Ctrl+O). You see the Outlining tab, as shown in Figure 8-1. Rather than see text, you see the headings in your document, as well as the first line underneath each heading. Now you get a sense of what is in your document and whether it is organized well. By choosing an option from the Show Level drop-down list, you can decide which headings to see onscreen.
FIGURE 8-1: A document in Outline view.
To leave Outline view when you’re done reorganizing your document, click the Close Outline View button or a view button apart from Outline.
Before you start rearranging your document in Outline view, get a good look at it:
Outline view is mighty convenient for moving sections in a document and for promoting and demoting sections. Use these techniques to rearrange and reorganize your document:
As long as you apply heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, and so on) to headings, you can collapse and expand parts of a document. Click the Collapse button next to a heading to conceal its subheadings and subtext. Collapsing clears the screen of material that doesn’t require your attention. Click the Expand button next to a heading to display its subheadings and subtext.
Figure 8-2 demonstrates expanding and collapsing. Use these techniques to collapse or expand the subheadings and subtext under a heading:
FIGURE 8-2: Collapse subheadings and subtext under a heading to keep the screen from getting crowded.
A book-size document or long report isn’t worth very much without a table of contents (TOC). How else can readers find what they’re looking for? Generating a table of contents with Word is easy, as long as you give the headings in the document different styles — Heading 1, Heading 2, and so on (Chapter 3 of this minibook explains styles). The beautiful thing about Word TOCs is the way they can be updated nearly instantly. If you add a new heading or erase a heading, you can update the TOC with a snap of your fingers. Moreover, you can quickly go from a TOC entry to its corresponding heading in a document by Ctrl+clicking the entry.
To create a table of contents, place the cursor where you want the TOC to go, visit the References tab, and click the Table of Contents button. On the drop-down list, choose one of Word’s automatic TOC options or choose Custom Table of Contents to fashion a TOC on your own in the Table of Contents dialog box. (See “Customizing a TOC,” later in this chapter, for information about fashioning a TOC in the Table of Contents dialog box.)
Follow these instructions to update and remove a TOC:
Want to tinker with your TOC? You can number the headings in different ways and tell Word to include or exclude certain headings.
To change around a TOC, click inside it, go to the References tab, click the Table of Contents button, and choose Custom Table of Contents on the drop-down list. You see the Table of Contents dialog box shown in Figure 8-3. Choose options to declare which headings you want for your TOC and how you want to format it:
Choosing a TOC depth: The Show Levels box determines how many heading levels are included in the TOC. Unless your document is a legal contract or other formal paper, enter a 2 or 3 here. A TOC is supposed to help readers find information quickly. Including lots of headings that take a long time to read through defeats the purpose of having a TOC.
FIGURE 8-3: You can decide for yourself which headings go in a TOC and how it’s numbered.
Sometimes the conventional TOC that Word generates doesn’t do the trick. Just because a heading has been given the Heading 1 style doesn’t mean that it should receive first priority in the TOC. Suppose that you created another style called Chapter Title that should stand taller in the hierarchy than Heading 1. In that case, you need to rearrange the TOC so that Heading 1 headings rank second, not first, in the TOC hierarchy.
Use the Table of Contents Options and Style dialog boxes to tinker with a TOC. These dialog boxes are shown in Figure 8-4. To open them, click, respectively, the Options button or Modify button in the Table of Contents dialog box (refer to Figure 8-3).
FIGURE 8-4: Changing a TOC’s structure and formatting.
A good index is a thing of beauty. User manuals, reference works of any length, and reports that readers will refer to all require indexes. Except for the table of contents, the only way to find information in a long document is to look in the index. An index at the end of a company report reflects well on the person who wrote the report. It gives the appearance that the author put in a fair amount of time to complete the work, even if he or she didn’t really do that.
An index entry can be formatted in many ways. You can cross-reference index entries, list a page range in an index entry, and break out an index entry into subentries and sub-subentries. To help you with your index, Figure 8-5 explains indexing terminology.
FIGURE 8-5: Different ways of handling index entries.
The first step in constructing an index is to mark index entries in your document. Marking index items yourself is easier than it seems. After you open the Mark Index Entry dialog box, it stays open so that you can scroll through your document and make entries.
If you see a word or phrase in your document that you can use as a main, top-level entry, select it; otherwise, place the cursor in the paragraph or heading whose topic you want to include in the index.
You can save a little time by selecting a word, as I describe shortly.
On the References tab, click the Mark Entry button (or press Alt+Shift+X).
The Mark Index Entry dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 8-6. If you selected a word or phrase, it appears in the Main Entry box.
Choose how you want to handle this index entry (refer to Figure 8-5 to see the various ways to make index entries).
When you enter the text, don’t put a comma or period after it. Word does that when it generates the index. The text that you enter appears in your index.
Decide how to handle the page reference in the entry.
Again, your choices are many:
You can boldface or italicize a page number or page range by clicking a Page Number Format check box.
In some indexes, the page or page range where the topic is explained in the most depth is italicized or boldfaced so that readers can get to the juiciest parts first.
If you selected a single word or phrase in Step 1, you can click the Mark All button to have Word go through the document and mark all words that are identical to the one in the Main Entry box; click Mark to put this single entry in the index.
Click outside the Mark Index Entry dialog box and find the next topic or word that you want to mark for the index. Then click the Mark Entry button on the References tab and make another entry.
FIGURE 8-6: Marking an index entry.
After you mark all the index entries, it’s time to generate the index:
Place the cursor where you want the index to go, most likely at the end of the document.
You might type the word Index at the top of the page and format the word in a decorative way.
On the References tab, click the Insert Index button.
You see the Index dialog box shown in Figure 8-7.
Choose options in the dialog box and click OK.
As you make your choices, watch the Print Preview box to see what happens.
FIGURE 8-7: Generating an index.
Here are the options in the Index dialog box:
To update an index after you create or delete entries, click it and then click the Update Index button on the References tab or right-click the index and then choose Update Field on the shortcut menu.
After you generate an index, read it carefully to make sure that all entries are useful to readers. Inevitably, something doesn’t come out right, but you can edit index entries as you would the text in a document. Index field markers are enclosed in curly brackets with the letters XE and the text of the index entry in quotation marks, like so: { XE: “Wovoka: Ghost Dance” }
. To edit an index marker, click the Show/Hide ¶ button on the Home tab (or press Ctrl+Shift+8) to see the field markers and find the one you need to edit. Then delete letters or type letters as you would do normal text.
Cross-references are very handy indeed. They tell readers where to go to find more information about a topic. The problem with cross-references, however, is that the thing being cross-referenced really has to be there. If you tell readers to go to a heading called “The Cat's Pajamas” on page 93, and neither the heading nor the page is really there, readers curse and tell you where to go, instead of the other way around.
Fortunately for you, Word lets you know when you make errant cross-references. You can refer readers to headings, page numbers, footnotes, endnotes, and plain-old paragraphs. And as long you create captions for your cross-references with the Insert Caption button on the References tab, you can also make cross-references to equations, figures, graphs, listings, programs, and tables. If you delete the thing that a cross-reference refers to and render the cross-reference invalid, Word tells you about it the next time you update your cross-references. Best of all, if the page number, numbered item, or text that a cross-reference refers to changes, so does the cross-reference.
Follow these steps to create a cross-reference:
Write the first part of the cross-reference text.
For example, you could write To learn more about these cowboys of the pampas, see page and then type a blank space. The blank space separates the word page from the page number in the cross-reference. If you are referring to a heading, write something like For more information, see “. Don’t type a blank space this time because the cross-reference heading text will appear right after the double quotation mark.
On the References tab, click the Cross-Reference button.
The Cross-Reference dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 8-8.
Choose what type of item you’re referring to in the Reference Type drop-down list.
If you’re referring to a plain old paragraph, choose Bookmark. Then click outside the dialog box, scroll to the paragraph you’re referring to, and place a bookmark there. (Chapter 1 of this minibook explains bookmarks.)
Make a choice in the Insert Reference To box to refer to text, a page number, or a numbered item.
The options in this box are different, depending on your choice in Step 3.
If you wish, leave the check mark in the Insert as Hyperlink check box to create a hyperlink as well as a cross-reference.
With a hyperlink, someone reading the document onscreen can Ctrl+click the cross-reference and go directly to what it refers to.
In the For Which box, tell Word where the thing you’re referring to is located.
To do so, select a heading, bookmark, footnote, endnote, equation, figure, graph, or whatnot. In long documents, you almost certainly have to click the scroll bar to find the one you want.
FIGURE 8-8: Entering a cross-reference.
When you finish creating your document, update all the cross-references. To do that, press Ctrl+A to select the entire document. Then press F9 or right-click in the document and choose Update Field on the shortcut menu.
A footnote is a bit of explanation, a comment, or a reference that appears at the bottom of the page and is referred to by a number or symbol in the text. An endnote is the same thing, except that it appears at the end of the section, chapter, or document. If you’ve written a scholarly paper of any kind, you know what a drag footnotes and endnotes are.
You will be glad to know that Word takes some of the drudgery out of footnotes and endnotes. For example, if you delete or add a note, all notes after the one you added or deleted are renumbered. And you don’t have to worry about long footnotes because Word adjusts the page layout to make room for them. You can change the numbering scheme of footnotes and endnotes at will. When you are reviewing a document, all you have to do is move the pointer over a footnote or endnote citation. The note icon appears, as does a pop-up box with the text of the note.
To enter a footnote or endnote in a document:
On the References tab, click the Insert Footnote button (or press Ctrl+Alt+F) or the Insert Endnote button (or press Ctrl+Alt+D).
In Print Layout view, Word scrolls to the bottom of the page or the end of the document or section so that you can enter the note, as shown in Figure 8-9. If you are in Draft view, the Notes pane opens at the bottom of the screen with the cursor beside the number of the note you’re about to enter.
FIGURE 8-9: Entering a footnote in Print Layout view (left); the Footnote and Endnote dialog box (right).
Click the Show Notes button at any time to see your notes in the Notes pane, at the bottom of the page, or at the end of the section or document.
Choosing the numbering scheme and positioning of endnotes and footnotes is quite easy. On the References tab, click the Footnotes group button. The Footnote and Endnote dialog box appears (refer to Figure 8-9). Tell Word where to place your notes:
In the Format area, tell Word how to number the notes:
By the way, the Convert button in the Footnote and Endnote dialog box is for fickle scholars who suddenly decide that their endnotes should be footnotes or vice versa. Click it and choose an option in the Convert Notes dialog box to turn footnotes into endnotes, turn endnotes into footnotes, or — in documents with both endnotes and footnotes — make the endnotes footnotes and the footnotes endnotes.
If a devious editor tells you that a footnote or endnote is in the wrong place, that you don’t need a note, or that you need to change the text in a note, all is not lost:
Footnotes and endnotes are renumbered when you move or delete one of them.
A bibliography is a list, usually in alphabetical order by author name, of all the books, journal articles, websites, interviews, and other sources used in the writing of an article, report, or book. Writing a good bibliography is a chore. Besides keeping careful track of sources, you have to list them correctly. Does the author’s name or work’s name come first in the citation? How do you list a website or magazine article without an author’s name?
Word’s Bibliography feature is very nice in this regard: It solves the problem of how to enter citations for a bibliography. All you have to do is enter the bare facts about the citation — the author’s name, title, publication date, publisher, and so on — and Word presents this information correctly in the bibliography. You can choose among several popular bibliographical styles (APA, Chicago, and others) from the Style drop-down list, as shown in Figure 8-10. After you make your choice, Word reformats all bibliography citations. You don’t have to worry about whether titles should be underlined or italicized, or how authors’ names should be listed in the bibliography.
FIGURE 8-10: Adding a citation (left) and formatting citations (right) for a bibliography.
An abbreviated citation appears in the text of your document in between parentheses where you enter a citation; the complete citation appears in the bibliography. After you enter the information about a citation, entering it a second time is easy because Word keeps a master list of all citations you have used in your work, both in the document you’re working on and your other documents. To enter a citation, click in your document at the place that refers to the source, go to the References tab, and use one of these techniques to enter the citation:
Your citation appears in text in parentheses. Move the pointer over the citation and click it to see an inline drop-down menu. From this menu, you can edit the citation as it appears in-text as well as edit it in the bibliography, as shown in Figure 8-11.
FIGURE 8-11: In-text citations have inline drop-down lists.
Use one of these techniques to edit a citation:
Citations appear in text enclosed in parentheses. Use one of these techniques to change how a citation appears in the text of your document:
Go to the References tab and follow these steps to generate your bibliography:
Click in your document where you want the bibliography to appear.
Probably that place is toward the end of the document.
On the References tab, open the Style drop-down list and choose a style.
If you’re generating your bibliography for a paper you will submit to a journal or institution, ask the editors which style they prefer for bibliographies and choose that style from the list.
Click the Manage Sources button.
You see the Source Manager dialog box. Citations in the Current List box will appear in your bibliography.
If necessary, address citations in the Current List box.
If you entered any citation placeholders, their names appear in the list next to question marks. Select these placeholders, click the Edit button, and enter information in the Edit Source dialog box.
To keep a citation from appearing in the bibliography, select it and click the Delete button.
There it is — your bibliography.