Techniques for managing theses using Microsoft Word 2024 for Mac

Theses and other long documents (books, manuals, reports) can present challenges that shorter documents wouldn't. Theses are often more structured, contain several levels of headings, and may have numbered headings. It is more difficult to maintain a standard "look and feel" throughout a long document like a thesis.  Find information on using the UWaterloo Thesis template below.

Theses often contain components not found in shorter documents such as a Table of Contents, List of Tables/Figures, an Index, cross references, footnotes or endnotes. The files used in the exercises below are   and fiddle.bmp. The .jpeg version below can be saved and used.

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University of Waterloo thesis requirements

Waterloo thesis regulations for formatting requirements are outlined on the Graduate Studies website. Some details worth mentioning (as of April 2008):

• The text of the thesis (main body) must either be double spaced or space and a half.

• Captions related to figures: it is acceptable to have them single spaced on the same page (some disciplines do require the caption to appear on a separate page).

In this article

Styles

The best way to ensure consistent formatting in a Word document is by consistent use of Word styles. Every paragraph in Word has a “Style” associated with it. A style is a collection of formatting that details the font, font size, font highlighting (bold, italics, etc.), paragraph alignment, paragraph indents, paragraph spacing, and so on. If a style is edited, and any of its attributes changed, the formatting of any paragraph to which that style was assigned will immediately change to reflect the modifications. The style assigned to the current paragraph is indicated in the Home tab of the navigation ribbon and found within the Styles Pane of your window.

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A document can contain many different styles, but most documents will have paragraphs of “Normal” style, which are standard paragraphs, and one to three levels of headings (Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3). 

It is important to use styles in all documents to carry out formatting of paragraphs of different types. This is especially true in longer documents where it is more difficult to apply standard formatting manually, and where the formatting requirements may change a number of times throughout the document production time. A unique style should be created for every paragraph type: normal paragraphs, indented paragraphs, etc.

You can create your own styles or adapt one of the many styles that are pre-defined in Word. It is highly recommended that you use the built in Heading styles Word provides. You can, of course, modify them to look as you like. You can view the recommended style list from Word by simply clicking on the arrow under the Styles section in the Home tab, but to see a complete list of styles:

• From the Format menu, choose Style...

• Under List: choose All styles

• Now in the Styles area you will see many built-in styles you may use. You may modify them as you will see later in this document.

• To go to a specific style, click on any style in the list and type the first letter of the style you are looking for; you will then see all styles beginning with that letter.

• To close the Style window, simply click on the Cancel button.

Heading styles

Amongst Word’s predefined styles are four levels of heading styles: Heading 1 through Heading 4. Although you could make up your own styles to apply to headings in your document, there are several reasons why you should use Word’s built-in heading styles.

• It becomes trivial to generate a Table of Contents of items tagged with heading styles.

• Word’s outline view offers a powerful tool for structuring long documents, and it is driven by Word’s heading styles.

• You can insert cross-references to headings created with Word’s heading styles.

• You can easily include the chapter number when numbering tables or figures, if you have used the Heading 1 style for your chapter headings

To practice editing styles, we will use the file called Nursery Rhymes.docx.

Modifying styles

If you do not explicitly assign a style to a paragraph, Word assigns the “Normal” style. Most other styles are based on this Normal style, so modifying the Normal style can have the effect of modifying other styles in the document. The following exercise takes you through the process of modifying a style.

For example, to change the Normal style to Arial, 11 point, with 3 points of white space following each paragraph, do the following.

Exercise:

1. Before beginning, change your measurement type to inches so that you may follow the exercises in this document as they are:

   • From the Word menu, choose Preferences...

   • Click on General in the Authoring and Proofing Tools section.

   • Near the bottom of the Settings section, beside Show measurements in units of: choose Inches from the drop down list.

   • Click on the RED X button to close the window.

2. Now open the downloaded file called Nursery Rhymes.docx

3. Control click on the Normal style in the Styles section of the Home tab and choose Modify, OR:

   • From the Format menu, choose Style...

   • Make sure the Normal style is selected in the list of styles and click on the Modify button.

   • The Modify Style dialog box will appear.

4. Under Formatting, from the font drop down list, select Arial, and from the size drop down select 11.

5. If we wanted to increase the spacing both before and after each paragraph by 6 points, we could do that by clicking on a preset button in the Modify Style box, but we want to be more precise than that, so we must click on the Format button at the bottom left, and choose Paragraph:

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6. Click OK, then click OK again, and then click Apply. The Normal style has been modified

Creating a new style

You may need to create a new style that does not currently exist in Word. For example, you may want a paragraph that is indented half an inch from both the left and right margins, and has 6 points of white space after, and 3 points before. This style could be called Indp.

Exercise:

1. From the Format menu, choose Style...

2. Click on the New... button.

3. The New Style dialog box will appear. Beside Name: enter the name for our new style, in our case Indp.

4. Ensure that Style based on: is the Normal style, and that the Style for following paragraph is Normal. We base this on the Normal style because we want it to inherit most attributes from Normal, such as the font, font size, alignment, etc. We choose Normal style for the following paragraph on the assumption that an indented paragraph will most likely be followed by a regular paragraph.
   
   

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5. Click Format and select Paragraph... Enter 0.5" for both Left and Right indentations. Under Spacing, enter 3 for Before: and 3 for After:. (The previous Normal paragraph will already have provided 3 points of space before an Indp paragraph.). Click OK.

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6. You could now add a keyboard shortcut for this style if you like. This can make it easier to apply a style while you are typing. (Note: keyboard shortcuts can be created for any style). You would do this by clicking on the Format button and choosing Shortcut Key... Press Command-Shift-I (all at once - this will be your shortcut key combination) and click on the Assign button. Click the OK button, the OK button again and then click Apply. You have successfully created a new style.

7. Now go to the end of the Jack and Jill rhyme, press Enter to start a new paragraph, and type the second verse of Jack and Jill:

   "Up Jack got and off did trot, As fast as he could caper, He went to bed to mend his head, With vinegar and brown paper"

8. Now apply your new Indp style to this paragraph by clicking anywhere in the paragraph, and selecting Indp from the Styles section of the Home tab or by pressing Command-Shift-I.

Modifying a heading style

As mentioned above, Word has nine levels of built-in heading styles, called Heading 1 to Heading 9. You will probably use 3 or 4 levels in your thesis, and the format of the heading styles is the most likely thing you will want to change.Steps to modify the Heading 1 and Heading 2 styles are given below.

Exercise:

1. Suppose we want Heading 1 styles to be in Helvetica font (it is acceptable to have the body of a document in one font, usually a serif font, and the document headings in a different font, usually sans serif), 16 point bold, centered.

2. From the Styles section of the Home tab, find the Heading 1 style. Hold down the control key on the keyboard and click on the Heading 1 style and then choose Modify from the drop-down list. The Modify Style dialog box will appear.

3. Under Formatting, choose Helvetica from the font list, 16 from the size list, and click on the Bold button if it is not already selected.

4. Now click the Format button (at the bottom left), and choose Paragraph...

5. In the dialog box that appears, choose Centered from the Alignment box (If you don't see 'Alignment:' click on Indents and Spacing at the top first).

6. Now click on Line and Page Breaks at the top of the window. Make sure that Widow/Orphan control and Keep with next are both checked. Keep lines together is also good to have checked for headings.

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Widow/Orphan control: Prevents Word from printing the last line of a paragraph by itself at the top of a page (widow) or the first line of a paragraph by itself at the bottom of a page (orphan)
Keep with next: Prevents a page break between the selected paragraph and the following paragraph.
Keep lines together: Will keep the lines of the heading together on the same page.

7. Click OK.

8. (Note in this window, that a Heading 1 style will be followed automatically by a Normal style. That’s all right, unless we knew we had a document structure where a Heading 1 was always followed immediately by a Heading 2. In that case, we would choose Heading 2 as the default style to follow a Heading 1. We don’t think that is the case here, so we will leave it at Normal.)

9. Let's create a shortcut key for each heading style to make it easier to apply them while typing. We'll use 1 for a Heading 1, 2 for a Heading 2, etc. Click the Format button at the bottom left and choose Shortcut Key... Hold down the keys 1 all at once. Click Assign, OK, OK and then Apply.

10. Now we want to modify a Heading 2 style. Our Heading 2s should be Helvetica font, 14 point bold, and left justified. Follow the above instructions (2. to 9.) to make these changes to the Heading 2 style (use 2 as the shortcut keys for a Heading 2).

Other heading styles can be modified in the same way. Some documents use the style “body text” for standard document paragraphs. If that is what you want, you should modify all other styles used in the document to make “Body Text” be the paragraph type to follow all other paragraphs and also the style that other styles are based on.

Numbering headings

Theses frequently have a requirement that all headings in the document be numbered. There are two types of numbering.

The first is list style numbering, where major headings are numbered with one style, perhaps I, II, III… second level headings in another style, perhaps A, B, C…etc. third level headings in yet another style, perhaps 1, 2, 3… and so on. Every time a new higher-level heading occurs, the numbering of lower level headings starts at the beginning.

The other type of numbering is legal style numbering, where first level headings are numbered 1, 2, 3… (or perhaps I, II, III…); second level headings are numbered 1.1, 1.2, 1.3…(or 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2… as appropriate); third level headings are numbered 1.1.1, 1.1.2.… and so on.

List style numbering

Exercise:

1. To number headings with a List style, first go to the top of your document by pressing Command-Home (together) on your keyboard. (Similarly, pressing Command-End will move the insertion point immediately to the end of the document. Want to get back to the last place you were working? Try SHIFT-F5.) If you are using a MacBook that doesn't have a Home or End button, Command + Fn + Left Arrow will move you to the beginning of the document and the Command + Fn + Right Arrow will move you to the end of the document.

2. In the Home tab, Paragraph section, click on the Multilevel List button and choose Define New Multilevel List

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3.  In the dialog box that appears, click the More button at the bottom left.

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4. Make sure Level 1 is selected by clicking 1 under Level:

   • Choose the numbering style you want by selecting it from the Number style: list., perhaps I, II, III, ... etc.

   • Modify the punctuation beside the number if you like. If you want the number followed by some other punctuation (or nothing) instead of a right parenthesis, click to the right of the punctuation beside the number/letter at the top under Number formatand hit the Delete key to remove the punctuation. If you want some other punctuation, type it now. If you don’t want the number followed by any punctuation, don’t type anything. (Ensure not to type over the letter/number but to only add/change the punctuation.)

   • Set Number position to Left, set Aligned at to 0.

   • Under Text position, set Indent at: to 0.

   • Beside Link level to style: choose Heading 1.

   • Beside Follow number with: choose Space.

5. Now select 2 under Level:

   • Select a, b, c, .. from the Number style: list.

   • Type the desired punctuation to follow the number style under Number format (ensure not to type over the letter/number but to only add/change the punctuation).

   • Set Number position to Left, set Aligned at to 0.

   • Under Text position, set Indent at: to 0.

   • Beside Link level to style: choose Heading 2.

   • Beside Follow number with: choose Space.

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6. Repeat the above procedure for levels 3, 4 and as many heading levels as you have in your document. In all cases, make sure that the Restart numbering after: (higher list level) is checked.

Legal style numbering

Exercise:

1. Go to the top of your document by pressing (together) (or Command + Fn + Left Arrow if you don't have a Home button) on your keyboard.

2. In the Home tab, Paragraph section, click on the Multilevel List button and choose the image for legal style numbering with heading styles attached:

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3. This may be all you need to do. If you want to change the alignment options or make the first level a roman numeral number (I, II, III, etc.), the steps below describe how to do this:

4. To customize, in the Home tab, Paragraph section, click on the Multilevel List button and choose Define New Multilevel List....

5. If necessary, click the More button at the bottom left to see more options.

6. If you want to change the first level to be a roman numeral number:

   • Make sure Level 1 is selected by clicking 1 under Level, and choose I, II, III, ... from the Number style: list.

   • If you want the number followed by some other punctuation (or nothing), click to the right of the punctuation beside the number/letter under Number format, and hit Delete to remove the punctuation. If you want some other punctuation, type it now. If you don’t want the number followed by any punctuation, don’t type anything. (Ensure not to type over the letter/number but to only add/change the punctuation.)

   • Now, we must reset levels 2, 3, ... back to regular legal style numbering:

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     • Select Level 2 under Level and then put a check beside Legal style numbering. Note, if we did not do this step, level 2 numbering would look like this: I.1, I.2, etc. instead of 1.1, 1.2, etc.

     • Repeat this for level 3 and any other levels you are using

7. If you want to change the alignment of the numbers/text:

   • Make sure Level 1 is selected by clicking 1 under Level.

   • Set the Aligned at: and Indent at: levels as you like.

   • Repeat this for levels 2 and 3 as well.

   • For each level you may also want to change:

     • Set Follow number with: to Space or Tab (Define the tab location by checking Add tab stop at: and enter the tab position; usually the Indent at: and tab stop are at the same position.)

     • Set Number position to Left, Centered, or /Right

8. Click OK.

Left aligning multi-line headings

Exercise:

1. If you anticipate any of your headings will wrap to a second line, you may want to set up your numbering such that the first line and any subsequent lines will line up vertically. To do this we will set a specified position for the text that follows the number and follow the number with a Tab.

2. First go to the top of your document by pressing (together) (or Command + Fn + Left Arrow if you don't have a Home button) on your keyboard.

3. In the Home tab, Paragraph section, click on the Multilevel List button and choose Define New Multilevel List....

4. If necessary, click the More button at the bottom left to see more options.

5. Make sure Level 1 is selected by clicking 1 under Level.

   • Set Number position to Left, set Aligned at to 0 (or whatever position you want your number to be left aligned at).

   • Check the checkbox beside Add tab stop at: and enter 0.5"(or larger if necessary); set Indent at: to 0.5"(or a larger indent if necessary) .

   • Beside Follow number with: choose Tab character.

6. Repeat step 7. for each level you are using. Keep in mind that the tab stop and indent should be larger than the Aligned at value by enough space to allow for your largest anticipated number (e.g. if you are using legal style numbering and anticipate a level 4 number like 23.12.11.1, you will need to make sure the Indent is at approximately 0.8" or so larger than the Aligned at setting.

7. Click OK once you have set these settings for all levels you are using.

Document templates

Every document created in Word has a template associated with it. A template is a collection of formatting, styles, macros and possibly text. When you start Word, a blank document is opened based on the “Normal” (or standard) template. If you create a new document by clicking on the File menu and choosing New Blank Document, Word opens a new blank document which uses the Normal template. To choose a different template, in Word 2011, you would click on the File menu and choose New from Template...

A template is simply a Word document, with a file extension of .dotx (regular template) or .dotm (a template that may contain macros) instead of .docx.

Saving and creating templates

Templates you create should be stored in the My Templates folder: /Users/youruserid/ Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/My Templates ('youruserid' is your log-in username). (In Word 2011, when saving a template, simply choose the Format, Word Template (.dotx), and the default folder location should change to My Templates.

 You may wish to create all the styles you think you will need, and set up some standard formatting, (margins, etc.) and:

• Choose File/Save As...

• Beside Format: choose Word Template (.dotx) from the drop down list (or, choose Word Macro-Enabled Template (.dotm) if your template is based on the uwthesis_word template as it contains macros).

• At the top beside Save As: type the name you would like your template to be called.

• Click the Save button.

• Now, every time you start a new document that will be part of your thesis, choose File/New from Template..., click on My Templates from the list on the left and then select your template and click Choose.

Using the UWaterloo Thesis template

The UWaterloo Thesis template (WatIAM login required) may be useful as-is for your thesis, or it may be a useful starting point for you to modify.

Exercise: Downloading and using the UWaterloo Word Thesis template

1. Download the UWaterloo Thesis template (dotm).

2. From the Downloads window, you can double click on the template.

3. When prompted, click on the Open button.

   1. A new document, based on the UW thesis template, will open in Word. You can choose to use this as a starting point for your thesis, or you may make changes to heading styles, etc. first. Alternatively, you may also want to make changes to the template and re save the template into your My Templates folder (under Saving and Creating Templates) as described above.

   2. Note: If you paste any text from other files into this thesis template, it is best to paste as plain text so that you do not bring in codes from other files (Edit/Paste Special..., choose Unformatted Text and click OK).

4. Note that although this template has been created with the help of the Graduate Studies Office at the University of Waterloo, your faculty/department may have specific requirements that are different from the template format, so please check the requirements of your faculty/department ahead of time.

Captioning and numbering of tables and figures

In a longer more structured document, you will frequently want to number and add captions to your tables and figures. You could do this manually, but a better idea is to let Word add these captions and automatically assign the numbers. You need this automated approach for a number of reasons.

• If you want to easily make a cross-reference to the table or figure, Word must maintain the caption.

• If you want to automatically create a List of Tables or List of Figures for your Table of Contents, Word must maintain the captions.

• If you insert or delete tables or figures, Word will automatically renumber if it maintains the captions.

A caption consists of the word Table or Figure, whichever is appropriate, followed by a number. You may then choose to add punctuation, such as a period or a colon, and then the text you wish to have for the caption.

Captioning tables

You may want to add captions to tables already entered into your document or, alternatively, you may want to have captions automatically added to any new tables you create.

Adding captions to existing tables

If you have tables without captions in your document and wish to add captions, you can do so quite easily. For each table:

• Click somewhere in the table

• From the Insert menu, choose Caption

• In the Caption box, it will read Table 1 and allow you to add further information. If you wish to have punctuation appear after the number, type it, and then type the text of the caption. Notice that the Position box lets you select 'Above selected item' or 'Below selected item' for the caption, but table captions are generally positioned above the table.

• Click OK.

Repeat the above procedure for every table in your document. Word will automatically provide the correct table number.

Automatically captioning tables

Word can automatically add the caption to a table when the table is created. To do this:

• From the Insert menu, choose Caption

• Click on the AutoCaption button. You will be presented with a list of objects that can be captioned automatically. One of those is Microsoft Word Table. Click the checkbox beside this item. Confirm the Options below are what you want and click OK. Now every time you create a table, the caption, 'Table', followed by the appropriate number, will be added automatically. You can simply click in the caption line, type any punctuation you wish, and then type the caption text.

Combining manual and Auto Captioning