The “Type of Source” drop-down at the top is pretty important that’ll determine what fields you get to type into, depending on whether you’re referencing a journal article or a book, say. In any case, though, once you pick “Insert Citation,” you can fill out a form with all of the details on the reference you’re adding. Yes, “Ribbon” is Microsoft’s weird and fancy name for the toolbar. We’re going to click “Insert Citation” here (and this is also where you can change the formatting of your references from APA, for example, to MLA), but just so you know, you may see that button all by itself on Word’s Ribbon depending on the size of your window.
Choose the “References” tab at the top and click the “Citations & Bibliography” button. Here’s how you get started: First, you’ll open Word (um, yeah), and then place your cursor where you’d like your in-text reference to be. And you can select which format you’d like your items to be in, too-APA, MLA, or Chicago, for example-and then automatically create a full bibliography when you’re ready. No more figuring out where those periods and italics go! As someone who occasionally proofreads academic papers, this is kind of a godsend. I think a lot of folks aren’t aware that if you’re using Microsoft Word to write a paper (or a book!) with references, the program can auto magically generate those for you.
