Two days ago a friend of mine who is now starting off her PhD sent me her Methodology section to read so I can give her some comments. What struck me is that in her whole Word document she wasn’t using any headings.
Now for the people who have neved used this – they have no idea what I’m talking about. So, I’ve decided to create a video and upload it onto youtube … unfortunately not of very good quality – if I have some time in the future I would change it.
I have shown you how to create three Headings in MS Word 2000: Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3. These three headings as I’ve said come predefined in Word and you can modify them to suit your needs. So, whenever you need Heading 1 for some text, all you have to do is just click Heading 1. One thing I didn’t tell you is that there is that besides the Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3 styles, there is also the ‘Normal’ style, which is the text style you will write under Headings. This can also be modified.
Using this system, Word can create for you, an automatic table of contents – so, make your life easy and start using Headers.
The principle is the same no matter which MS Word you use although where the side-bars and menus are located might differ. I reckon in other text documents such as OpenOffice etc the way it can be manipulated would be similar. Have a look at the help in MS Word on Styles and Formatting for more information.
Research Tips 