Sunday 16 May 2010

Learn Bibliography Management in Word (APA Style) - Connection with Simple Multicast Networks

Ah. For many projects past I have oft-ignore the bibliography manager, mainly because there was a learning curve, but also because I half-expected most of the exciting "Insert Citation"-type functionality to appear in the "Insert" section of the Ribbon rather than the "References" section of the Ribbon. Discovering the "References" section is to say the least a revelation.

"References" is where you control your bibliography and table of contents. Here is a list of the subsections in the "Refs" tab.

1. Table of contents - self-explanatory
2. Footnotes - ditto
3. Citations and Bibliography
4. Captions - for Figures etc.

Let's talk about Citations and Bibliography. Should these link in direct with footnotes?

First in Biblio sub-tab, select the APA styles, this is a nice and concise biblio-style. APA stands for American Psychological Association and is the common style for citing papers in the social sciences. Chicago style is more long-winded, printing out people's full names - who has time?

To add a source, click on "Manage Sources" and click New (or simple Alt-N). To get into "Manage Sources" you can type Alt-SM ("Sausages and Mash"). Authors can be designated "Corporate Authors" e.g. when a trade association etc. commissions a report. If you are translating footnotes into Sources, then scroll down the page to ensure the footnotes are visible at the page. Then Alt-SM, Alt N (SMN -> Simple Multicast Network). This is because Source Manager takes most of the screen and is fixed size and Always On Top.

Source Manager can distinguish between a number of types of sources, for example: in order of publishing reputability - Journal Article, Article in a Periodical, Report (e.g. draft articles, not submitted to a journal).

There is also built-in logic for handling web sources. From market data websites you can cite the source as "Corporate Author" and type in the Company Name, which will be used to "index" the reference.

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