It’s a good idea to be familiar with the rules and structure of these elements, but there are also some great shortcuts you can take to complete these tasks efficiently and accurately. The style guide resources listed in our previous post will give you clear instructions about how to format your in-text citations and reference list or bibliography. And in case you’re curious, Pages can do this too, sort of you’ll need to install a plug-in to get some help, though.If you’re writing an academic paper, thesis, journal article or dissertation, you’ll be required to cite your sources in a particular style. If you’d like even more information about how this works, check out Microsoft’s article on the subject. Click the arrow there, and you’ll find the option to update the bibliography.

Pick your favorite style, and away you go! Word will generate the bibliography for you and insert it wherever you’d put your cursor.Īnd one more thing here: If you then go back and end up adding more citations, you can click on your bibliography section to reveal a header. When you do so, you can click one of the options for how you’d like yours to look. You can then double-click any one of those to insert its in-text reference again!įinally, when you’re ready to create your bibliography, click either the “Citations & Bibliography” button or choose “Bibliography” straight from the Ribbon if you see it there.

You can continue adding as many of these as you need, and if you want to reuse one you’ve already entered, just click the “Citations” button on the Ribbon (which, as I mentioned, may be underneath “Citations & Bibliography”), and you’ll see the ones you’ve previously put in. Once you pick that, though, you’ll just type in all of the relevant info, like this:Ĭlick “OK,” and Word will add the citation within your text. 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.

How to insert a citation in word 2013