USING WORD: STANDARD ACADEMIC FORMAT
Follow the links on
the menu to the left for additional guides to specific
aspects of paper format.
This guide
explains how to format your documents in Microsoft Word so
that they follow the standard rules for formatting academic
papers as described in style books for undergraduate
writing. These rules apply to papers in all classes, unless
otherwise indicated by your professor. Using them
demonstrates your awareness of basic expectations for
college writing. Note that using non-standard margins,
paragraph spacing, or fonts may be seen by some instructors
as a way to artificially inflate page length.
Note: These instructions apply to all versions of Word
for Mac and for the 2003 version of Word for Windows. I
haven’t yet updated them to include instructions for the
2007 version of Word for Windows, but the tools should
nevertheless be easy to find if you look around on the
toolbar at the top.
DOCUMENT MARGINS
Rule: Papers submitted for review or grading should
have 1” margins all around. This should be the default for
Word, but if your default setting is to have left and right
margins of 1.25”, change your default. Page length
requirements are based on 1” margins.
Instructions: Go to the Format menu, drag down to
Document, change the margins, and the click on the Default
button and accept the change to the Normal template. Make
sure you leave the gutter set to 0” or you’ll mess up your
document formatting.
INDENTATION
Rule: The first line of each paragraph should be
automatically indented.
Instructions: This should be the default for Word,
but if not, you might want to change your Normal style, as
described above. To change the indentation format for a
document, choose Select All from the Edit menu. Then go to
the Format menu, drag down to Paragraph, look under the
“Special” drop-down menu in the Indentation section, and
select “First Line.” This setting automatically indents the
first line of a new paragraph so that you don’t have to do
it manually.
FONT
Rule: College papers should be in a standard
academic font: either Times New Roman or Cambria, in 12pt
size. (If you submit a paper in another font, I will change
it on the file I download.)
Instructions: Times New Roman or Cambria 12pt should
be the default for Word, but if yours is different then
change your default. Go to the Format menu, drag down to
Style, make sure “Normal” is selected from the list of
styles, and click “modify.” Choose the correct font and
size from the Formatting menu. Click “OK” to make the
change to your default settings.
ALIGNMENT
Rule: The text of your paper should be left aligned,
NOT justified, as justified text is hard to read if it
hasn’t been professionally typeset. The default in Word is
left alignment, so don’t change it.
Follow the links on the menu to the left for
additional guides to specific aspects of paper
format.