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Paper formatting is based upon the rules of the particular style manual you are using. The most common style manuals used in academia are APA Style, MLA Style, Turabian, and the Chicago Manual of Style. The most commonly used style in music education is APA Style and will be that covered here. All style manuals define how a paper should be written, the format of the paper when printed, and how references are cited. Citing References. Once you begin identifying references with keywords during the library research for you paper, you should use the style manual required for your course to assure reference accuracy. This is specially true when taking notes of a reference. You must accurately cite the reference at the top of your notes using the course required style manual. It will make it much easier when actually writing the paper and save considerable time. You will find it valuable to carry examples of reference citations with you so that you can refer to these examples when doing your library research. Citing Another's Ideas. As you type your paper, when you include another author's ideas, these must be cited. Any text that are exact quotations of another author. This must be indicated in the text. Click on the reference citation link below. Paper Format. Prior to using your word processor, you should set the word processor so that it will have all margins, type font, etc. set to that required by the style manual. Most modern word processors have templates or style sheets for the major style manuals available. These are wonderful time savers and make help you assure that your paper is presented correctly.An APA Style template is available free of charge for Microsoft® Word. To obtain this template, click the link below. WordPerfect® 8 has a built in style sheet for APA Style. Learn how to use these important features of your word processor. Using the APA Style Template for WordOnce you have installed the APA Style template in your system, start Word and open the APA template as a new document. Immediately save your document using a meaningful file name in an area of your system that you can remember. From now on, save frequently. This is the only way to avoid disaster should your computer system suddenly fail. Substitute Text. Go through the document and substitute your text for that in the template. For instance, change "Insert Title Here" to the title of the paper. The running head is the two to three word descriptor that will be printed at the top of each page of the paper. Using Styles. The APA template has within it all the formatting styles required by APA. You apply the styles for every element of the paper you write. For instance, if you have a first level heading, apply the style Heading 1 and the text will be automatically formatted to the first level heading required by APA. Formatting Toolbar. The format for a style can be thought of being carried in the paragraph mark that appears at the end of each paragraph when the invisible characters are displayed. To assign styles, it is best to assure that the Formatting Toolbar is displayed. To set this, under the View menu select Toolbars and assure that Formatting is checked. Assigning A Style To A New Paragraph. With the cursor at the location where you are about to type, click to the right of the style name area of the formatting toolbar and select the style you desire. Now all the material that you type will be in that style. Some styles are set so that when you enter an enter (or return), the next style will default to the regular APA paragraph style. Assigning A Style To An Existing Paragraph. Select the paragraph or consecutive paragraphs to which you would like to assign the style. Click to the right of the style name are of the formatting toolbar and select the style you desire. Keyboard Shortcuts
For Assigning A Style. With the cursor at the location where
you want to change the style or with the paragraphs you want to assign
the style selected, enter Ctrl-Shift-S for a PC or Command-Shift-S for
a Mac, type the first letter of the style, use the up and down arrows to
select the desired style, and press enter (or return) to select the style.
Copyright © 1999 by Edward
P. Asmus, Ph.D.
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