Text Formatting in MS Word

All writing you hand in to me will have to be computer-printed. It will also have to follow a set of rules which determine the look of your pages. Most of these rules follow the MLA style guidelines, and below you will find the most basic of them, along with the corresponding Microsoft Word menu options.

Note that the following refers to the copies of Windows 98 previously installed on the Department boxes. Things may or may not be different in XP. Either way, most of the following is done automatically by my APA and MLA Templates . You may want to look at these first.

The Basics

The following formatting options will keep you covered.

Font and Font Size

Your text must be printed in Times or Times New Roman at 12 point. Select these from the font menu in your task bar:

Line Spacing

Your text must be double-spaced. Select ‘double’ in the line spacing menu:
書式｜段落｜インデントと行間隔｜行間｜2行

Setting Margins

Set your top, bottom, right and left page margins to 25 mm:
ファイル｜ページ設定｜余白｜

Pagination

All your pages must have a page number in the top right corner:
挿入｜ページ番号｜位置（ページの上）｜横位置（右）

Left-aligning text

By default, i.e. unless you change it, the Japanese version of Word will ‘justify’ (両揃え) your text. This creates ugly gaps between your words, so do make sure you left-align your writing:
書式｜段落｜インデントと行間隔｜配置（左揃え）

Spell Checking

Always use the spell checker. You may set it to British English, but most likely you will be using American spelling:
ツール｜その他の校正ツール｜言語の選択｜英語（US）

More Menu Options

Once you understand the formatting options above and know how to use them, take a look at the following things:

Setting Tab Stops

Tab stops (tabs) are convenient for indenting block quotations:
書式｜タブとリーダー｜規定値

Creating Footnotes

Here’s how:
挿入｜脚注

Making non-printing characters visible on screen

You may find it convenient to have non-printing characters (spaces, paragraphs, tabs etc.) displayed on screen:
ツール｜オプション｜表示｜編集記号の表示

Word Count

You can get the number of words in your file counted:
ツール｜文字カウント

URLs without underlines

By default, Word will automatically turn Web addresses into hyperlinks. While this may be handy sometimes, it’s annoying if you want to print the document without underlined URLs. Turn them off like this:
ツール | オートコレクト | 入力オートフォーマット | インターネットとネットワークのアドレスをハイパーリンクに変更する（チェックをはずす）