Microsoft Word contains some wonderful features which can save you time and stress – and help you to create clear and academically appropriate writing.
Some of its most useful tools enable you to create mulitilevel lists of headings which are stable no matter how much you ‘play about’ with your document, and can then turn those headings into interactive lists of contents. Add to this caption numbering for figures, tables and equations, which stays correct however much you rearrange your work, and you have a very powerful friend in Word.
However, these same features can drive you to screaming point if you only use them occasionally, as it’s really easy to forget their intricacies and find yourself getting into more and more of a muddle as you try to correct seemingly minor problems. The following short YouTube videos by Dr James Clark of King’s College, London, give very clear instructions on how to set up and use documents in Word – useful for anything from a 2,500-word essay to an 80,000-word PhD thesis. Dr Clark’s videos are aimed at science students, but they are equally applicable to all subjects.
They will each take about 15 minutes of your time but may well save you hours throughout your writing career – I strongly recommend you give them a try!
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