Using Microsoft Word 2013 for Academic Papers

Microsoft Word is a popular word-processing program. It is capable of doing many things, and because of that, it is complex, sometimes difficult to use — and sometimes it does things we did not ask it to do. However, after we learn how to control Word, it will make the process of preparing papers much easier. We will find that it can do things we want it to do – we just need to learn how to use it. This tutorial is designed for a variety of users. For beginnings, some of what we say will be too complicated. For more experienced users, some of what we say will be too simplistic. So feel free to skip the parts you do not want. But if you think something is too complicated, you might want to skim it anyway, just so that you’ll know that such things can be done, if you ever need them. Store it away for a later day. Our focus in this document is for academic papers. Other users will probably find this information helpful, too, but our focus is on academic papers. Some of the default settings in Word are designed for business use, and academic papers require different settings. So we need to learn how to change the settings in Word. We examine each of the menu ribbons and features, skipping those that are not needed for academic papers. We spend the most space for File, Home, Insert, Page Layout, References, Review, and View. Includes more than 100 screenshots to illustrate how to do it.