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Citing and Referencing (APA) Lower School: Guide to using the tools in Word

A guide to help MYP pupils learn how to cite and reference.

Introduction

Using the tools in Word to create citations and a bibliography

This guide has been written to support you in using the tools in Word to create your bibliography. It is equally applicable to Mac and PC users, but unfortunately Word for iPad (including the iPad Pro) does not support this feature. If you are restricted to using an iPad Pro, please contact Mrs Toerien for advice.

If you do not have Word on your computer, you can download it for free using the school educational license. Please check the guidance using the link at the bottom of the Oakham Start page.

Citations

Inserting a citation:

If you are including a quotation from a text or using ideas that you have read somewhere, you must say where that information has come from.  The style we use in school is APA which is a code that, at a basic level, requires an author, a date and a page number.

1. Put the cursor after the quotation or idea you have included from your source material.

2. Click on the References tab at the top of the page.

3. Check that the 'Style' is 'APA Sixth Edition', then click on Insert citation.

4. Then click on Add new source.

5. Choose the type of source - in this example it is a book.

The source type gives you the fields you need to complete.  A few tips are:

  • Authors should be 'surname, first name';
  • Corporate author = an organisation if there is no named individual author, e.g. Britannica, The Day;
  • Webpage = title of the article;
  • Website = name of the site;
  • URLs can be copied and pasted from the browser.  As this refers to an individual webpage, it takes the place of the page number in the citation code.

6. If you are citing from a book, once you have saved your information here, click on the citation in the text, edit citation, add a page number and click 'OK'.

Bibliography

Adding a bibliography:

This shows the range of sources you have consulted and taken ideas from.  It should usually appear on its own page at the end of your work.

1. Insert a page break at the end of your work.  There are different ways of doing this, but Page Layout > Breaks > Page is a good route to know.

2. Once you have a new page, select References > Bibliography > Choose the top option - and, hey presto! a bibliography will appear.

3. As you add more citations to your work, you can easily update your bibliography by clicking on Update Citations and Bibliography.

Top Tip: Turning on the Show/Hide feature will show you where page breaks and other hidden formatting are.  This is really useful if your work is looking a little odd but you can't work out why.

Table of Contents

Adding a Table of Contents:

To use the Table of Contents tool in Word, you need to use the 'Heading Styles' in the top toolbar. Main headings should be 'Heading 1', subheadings should be 'Heading 2' and any further sub-sections should be 'Heading 3'.  If you use these, you can create and update a table of contents automatically.

Your Table of Contents should appear on the first page of your work so you may need to make space for it by adding a page break (as you did for the Bibliography above). It will be useful to turn on the Show'Hide feature here again too.

To insert your Table of Contents, put the cursor at the very beginning of your work, then click on References > Table of Contents > choose option 1 and,voilà,you will have a table of contents.

If you change anything in your essay, add more sections or pages, DON'T try to type changes in the table of contents, instead click on it at the top, choose to update the whole table, and it will make the changes for you. 

 

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