• About
  • Contact
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Shop Merch
SWHELPER
  • Login
  • Home
  • Opinion
  • News
  • Politics
  • Education
  • Health
  • Mental Health
  • LGBTQ
  • Justice
No Result
View All Result
Post Jobs
Subscribe
  • Home
  • Opinion
  • News
  • Politics
  • Education
  • Health
  • Mental Health
  • LGBTQ
  • Justice
No Result
View All Result
SWHELPER
No Result
View All Result
ADVERTISEMENT
Home Technology

Optimizing Microsoft Word for Academic Writing

Landon SchnabelbyLandon Schnabel
12/01/2016
in Technology
2
Optimizing Microsoft Word for Academic Writing
0
SHARES
13
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

writing-630x310

Microsoft Office Word is one of the most commonly used software editing programs of all the time, but we rarely think about how to make it work better to fit our needs. You might not realize it, but there are several easy ways to optimize Word to make it more efficient and effective when using in an academic setting. In this article, I will be sharing with you six practical tips on how to customize Microsoft Word to help save you time, create documents that are more professional and readable, as well as how to set up Word as a citation manager.

1) Don’t rely on Word’s default proofing settings

If you want Word to offer stylistic suggestions or if you’d like more data about your writing than word count, such as number of passive sentences and readability statistics, you can turn on more options. Go to options—you should be able to find this under the file tab—and then Proofing. From here you will be able to turn on style suggestions and readability statistics, which will be available to you after you go through the spelling and grammar check suggestions.

2) Remove metadata

This is vital if you’re submitting something that is supposed to be fairly judged without knowledge of the author—e.g., peer review—or if you don’t want someone to know how long you’ve spent editing a document. To remove this metadata, go to the file tab and then select the info option. From there you can see a “Prepare for Sharing” button that you should use in some circumstances.

3) Use Field Codes

You should have an academic writing document template with embedded and automatically updating field codes. You can use these to insert things such as the date the document was most recently revised, the word count, etc. To start using field codes, go to the Insert tab, find the Quick Parts button and click on it, and select Field from the drop-down menu that will appear.

4) Use Word to create PDFs

You don’t need the full version of Adobe Acrobat to create PDFs. When saving a document, you can select PDF as the format and have a document that appears more final and professional.

5) Use a citation manager that has a Word plug-in

Don’t cite manually. Citation managers can be used to store and organize your references, including PDF files associated with them, and then to automatically cite and create bibliographies as you write in Word. I’m familiar with Endnote and Mendeley. Both are useful and have Word plug-ins for citing, but I’ve found Mendeley to be simpler to use for citing in Word, easier to learn, and better for organizing my journal article PDFs. Most importantly, Mendeley is free.

6) Use the Review tab

There are many things you can do from the review tab. Experiment with the Track Changes and Compare buttons. They won’t be entirely necessary for everything you do—especially the compare button—but they are indispensable in some situations.

Below, I  have included a video from Mendeley on how to incorporate their OpenOffice plugin into Microsoft Word.

Share this:

  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
Tags: academiccitation managercitationsEndnoteMendeleyOpenOfficePDFPluginWriting
Previous Post

Is Saying Victim Failed to Protect Children Another Form of Victim Blaming

Next Post

Home Health and Patient Centered Medical Homes

Next Post
Home Health and Patient Centered Medical Homes

Home Health and Patient Centered Medical Homes

Please login to join discussion
ADVERTISEMENT

  • Ending the Therapeutic Relationship: Creative Termination Activities

    Ending the Therapeutic Relationship: Creative Termination Activities

    94 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • What Feelings Are In Your Heart: An Art Therapy Exercise for Kids

    694 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • The Biopsychosocial Perspective to Mental Health and Illness

    3 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • My Journey as a Teacher and the Future of Education

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Fast and Furious Star Paul Walker Died During Charity Event for Philippines Typhoon Victims

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
ADVERTISEMENT
SWHELPER

We bring content to support you and the people you care about in their various stages of life. If you are searching in google on how to help or assist a loved one or yourself, check out our content.

LEARN MORE »

  • Terms of Service
  • Article Submissions
  • Advertising
  • Shop Merch

© 2024 SWHELPER.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
If You Enjoyed This Post
Join Our Newsletter
Subscribe
Give it a try, you can unsubscribe anytime.
Close
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Subscribe
  • Category
    • Business
    • Culture
    • Economy
    • Lifestyle
    • Health
    • Travel
    • Opinion
    • Politics
    • Tech
    • World
  • Find/Post Jobs
  • Contact Us
  • Shop Merch

© 2024 SWHELPER.

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.
 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.