Adding properly formatted citations and references is essential for academic papers, scientific journals, and other research documents. Luckily, Word has handy built-in tools that make the process smooth and simple. In this tutorial, I’ll walk through the steps for easily creating citations in Word.
Introduction
Citations serve the important purpose of giving credit to sources that helped inform your work. They allow readers to verify the information presented and do further reading if desired.
There are many different citation styles used in publishing and academia, such as:
- APA style – Used in psychology, education, and social sciences.
- MLA style – Used in English literature and arts.
- Chicago style – Often used for history and humanities.
Word’s citation features take care of properly formatting your citations and bibliography in the required style. The key steps include:
- Selecting your citation style
- Entering source details
- Inserting in-text citations
- Adding a bibliography or works cited list
- Editing citations/bibliography as needed
Follow the steps below to easily generate polished, accurately formatted citations in Word.
Select Your Citation Style
First, decide which citation style is appropriate for your document. Common options include APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, IEEE, AMA, and more.
Go to the References tab and click the drop-down arrow for Style. Choose the style you need. This will determine how your citations and bibliography are formatted.
Add Source Information
Now it’s time to enter details for each source you want to cite. Click Manage Sources under References to open the master list.
Click New to manually add info like author, publication title, date, URL, etc. Enter all the details required for your chosen style.
Save and add an entry for each source you will cite. This source bank will populate your citations.
Insert In-Text Citations
In the body text where you refer to information from a source, insert an in-text citation.
Click Insert Citation under References, then select the correct source from your master list. The citation will be added in proper format like (Smith, 2019) or [1].
Add citations wherever you cite or paraphrase external information. This links back to the full source in the bibliography.
Insert a Bibliography/Works Cited Page
At the end of your document, add the full references list. Click Bibliography under References and select the formatting for the list.
This adds the complete bibliography or works cited page by pulling from the sources you entered. The list will be correctly formatted in your selected style.
Edit Citations or Bibliography as Needed
Carefully review the inserted citations and bibliography to make sure they conform perfectly to the style guidelines.
If you spot any formatting errors, edits can be made manually to the citations or bibliography as needed.
Properly formatted citations and references are crucial. Word’s tools make the process seamless while adhering to formatting conventions. Now you can quickly cite sources and give credit to external information relied upon in your work.
