Microsoft-Word on J. David Stark

How to Type Biblical Languages in Unicode

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In biblical studies, you need to be able to type biblical languages. Transliteration can work, but you can’t always bank on using it. Instead, use Unicode.

The Right Way to Change Word Styles to Direct Formatting

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Using styles is a great way to ensure consistent formatting in a Word document. But, here’s a way to turn these styles into “direct” formatting.

Do You Make One of These Common Mistakes with Footnote Spacing?

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 14:50:59 +0000

Style manuals often require that footnotes have a blank line between them. There are two common mistakes about how to get this blank line.

How to Actually Modify the Language List in Word

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 12:00:00 +0000

Microsoft Word’s language list can be helpful for multilingual documents. A few simple steps will set it right again if it gets messy.

How to Quickly Create a Dynamic Table of Contents

Mon, 23 May 2022 12:00:00 +0000

Tables of contents can consume much more time than they should. But Word can create tables that automatically update with your document.

Your Word Processor Is Important. But How Do You Use It?

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 12:00:00 +0000

Your word processor is an important tool. But how to make it do many things that are quite common in biblical studies has been pretty obscure.

How to Correctly Format Your Bibliography

Mon, 02 Nov 2020 12:00:56 +0000

Combined with a few other steps, editing Word’s “Bibliography” style will give you more consistent formatting with fewer headaches.

How You Should Not Format Your Bibliographies

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 12:00:05 +0000

You can get your bibliography to look like SBL style requires in a few different ways. But several common approaches create serious problems.

How to Easily Change First Page Margins in Word

Mon, 19 Oct 2020 12:00:00 +0000

On the first page of a major section, SBL style asks for a 2-inch top margin. But that doesn’t mean you need to change the margin size in Word.

The Odd Thing about Font and Line Sizes

Mon, 22 Jun 2020 12:00:00 +0000

When you select a font, you select its size in a unit called “points.” But the font face also affects the visual size of lines and type on the page.

How to Justify Your Title Page Text Blocks in No Time

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 12:00:03 +0000

You can save yourself a lot of time by letting Word handle title page formatting—particularly when you’re vertically justifying the title page text.

How to Prepare Your Title Page Text Blocks

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 12:00:00 +0000

If you delegate your title page formatting to Word, you can save time formatting. A key preparatory step is to properly segmenting your title page text.

How to Actually Format Your Title Page Text

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 12:00:00 +0000

If you delegate your title page formatting to Word, you can save yourself time spent formatting.((Header image provided by Etienne Girardet.)) You can also end up with a title page that’s more precisely formatted.

To start delegating your title pages to Word, there are four basic steps. The first of these is to capitalize and center your title page text.

To illustrate how to format your title page text, I’m going to assume you’ve set up your essay’s title page in Word like I recommend.

Why You Need to Delegate Your Title Pages

Mon, 25 May 2020 12:00:00 +0000

You can space your title page content simply by entering blank paragraphs. But if you do so, you set yourself up for more work and at least three problems.

The Fundamentals of How to Format a Title Page

Mon, 18 May 2020 12:00:00 +0000

To pass your title page formatting off to Word, you need to start by understanding what SBL style requires in formatting your title page.

The No-fail Way to Space Footnotes

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 12:00:52 +0000

Style manuals often require that footnotes have a blank line between them. The best method for achieving this spacing is to edit the footnote style.

What You Need to Know about Editing Tables of Contents Styles

Mon, 24 Feb 2020 12:00:00 +0000

To follow the “Student Supplement for The SBL Handbook of Style,” there are three key steps to editing the styles for your table of contents.

What You Need to Know about Formatting Tables of Contents

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 12:00:00 +0000

It’s not immediately clear how to customize some formatting for tables of contents. The key to make the formatting “stick” is to modify its styles.

Turn the Tables of Contents over to Word

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 12:00:00 +0000

Microsoft Word can quickly create tables of contents so that the headings and page numbers update along with your document.

How to Format Headings with Styles in Word

Mon, 27 Jan 2020 12:00:00 +0000

In Microsoft Word, a “style” is a collection of one or more pieces of formatting information. Styles are especially helpful when you use them to format your headings.

How to Quickly Number Pages for Long Essays in Word

Fri, 13 Dec 2019 12:22:39 +0000

The guidance about page number placement in for SBL style long essays is clear enough. Achieving this placement in Word can be too with some simple steps.

How to Quickly Number Pages for Short Essays in Word

Mon, 11 Nov 2019 12:00:22 +0000

The guidance about page number placement in for SBL style short essays is clear enough. Achieving this placement in Word can be too with some simple steps.

Prefix keys for Microsoft Word

Mon, 24 Jul 2017 13:00:10 +0000

In Dan Gookin’s Word 2016 for Dummies ( affiliate disclosure; Wiley, 2016), he provides a good deal of helpful guidance for beginning Word users. One particularly helpful resource that may be of interest more broadly is his nicely condensed presentation of prefix keys for producing diacritical marks (pg. 256, reproduced below).

Table of prefix keys for Word 2016

As the name suggests, the prefix key combination gets typed first, then the letter to which the diacritic should attach, and voila—the appropriate combined character is produced.

Word 2016 introduction for Mac users?

Mon, 17 Jul 2017 13:00:08 +0000

The “for dummies” series has a couple good introductions to Microsoft Word ( for all and specifically “for professionals”). But, these texts seem to concentrate on Word as it appears in Windows, which is sometimes surprisingly inconsistent with how ostensibly the same version of Word appears in Mac OS.

The similarly themed “idiot’s guides” series also doesn’t appear to have a text that addresses the current version for Mac users. The Shelly Cashman series text also seems to leave Mac users with less helpful guidance than those running Windows.

Overlining text in Microsoft Word

Tue, 21 Feb 2017 14:00:36 +0000

Overlining is comparatively straightforward in Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice. But, for Microsoft Word users, overlining still isn’t a default formatting feature, as is its companion underlining.

Sometimes inserting a symbol or special character will work if you can find one that matches the overlined character you need. In other cases, Word’s cache of symbols and special characters simply isn’t large enough to cover everything (e.g., when discussing nomina sacra). Sometimes, creating a character image might work, but inserting an image can create issues with text flow and line spacing.

Full-height Footnote Numbers in Microsoft Word

Tue, 19 Jan 2016 22:06:10 +0000

Microsoft Word ties footnote anchors in the main text and footnote numbers at the start of footnotes to the same style. Consequently, it’s difficult to get full-height footnote numbers followed by a period (cf. Chicago Manual of Style, SBL Handbook of style).

The process for getting this result discussed at Word MVPs does not seem to work in Word v16. But Word’s InsertFootnoteNow function can be intercepted to add the following macro commands to produce this result: