Thursday's Word Lesson

Good afternoon everyone.  Hope all are enjoying a glorious day.

Today was a very informative day when it comes to writing the dreaded report for educational purposes.  I have written quite a few papers and I am familiar with the American Psychological Assoaciation Format (APA), difficult to understand and format for the first time.  It still can be difficult when putting together the references.  So, when I was told that I will be doing a Modern Language Association of America (MLA) research paper, I was a little nervous. 

Our instructor had enlightened us on how to format such a paper.  Now, in my opinion, I rather do an MLA than an APA any day of the week after today's lesson.

Today's Class Topic:

• How to format headings and insert a table of contents from those headings.  Inserting a table of contents is useful and can be found on the "References" Ribbon; which I will be discussing further below.
• How to format an MLA research paper.

New Keyboard Shortcuts:

• Control Q = Quit all formatting.  It will revert back to original and you will have to reformat again.
• Control G = Go To tab, but it will also show you the "Find & Replace" tabs also.
• Control F = Find:  Very useful when you are looking for a misspelled word in a long document.
• Control Home = Takes you to the beginning of the document.
• Control End = Takes you to the end of the document.
• Control Enter = Inserts a new page.
• Control T = Hanging indent.  Very, very useful when working on the MLA works cited page. 

New Things I Learned Today:

• Learned how to format an MLA paper. 
• Learned that the formatting for the Works Cited page has changed since April.
• Learned that you can put together a CD and use as a portfolio on job interviews.  (Will be doing this).
• Learned that inserting a table of contents in a document is very useful and it will tell exactly where the reader can go to find information.  Very extensive formatting with a simple flare. 

New MS Word Ribbon Item:

We learned, as mentioned earlier, about the table of contents.  On the "References" Ribbon you will find the table of contents.  This will only work if there are headings in your document.  Once the headings are in you can click on Table of Contents and it will give you three options up-front.  Today we used the second option, "Automatic Table 2", because we also had some sub-headings.  This will be an "ace in the hole" when formatting a document with a table of contents for a future boss.

In my opinion, the Works Cited page is the most difficult to format.