Using a word-processor

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Word-processors: virtues and vices

The Department of French encourages the use of word-processors for the submission of essays and other written work. This note provides practical advice on the use of Microsoft Word in the preparation of your written work. The benefits of the use of a word-processing program include:

• transparent organization of your work (use of headings, organization of paragraphs, preparation of notes and bibliographies);
• ease of revision (you can print drafts, annotate and revise printed copies, revise on screen);
• readability of the printed text;
• ease of implementation of style conventions (e.g. presentation of quotations, use of italics for the titles of full-length works);
• use of computer files and programs means that some materials can be re-used from essay to essay (e.g. bibliographical materials).

Word-processors, which have mainly been developed by North American companies for use in English-speaking countries, also present a number of drawbacks:

• awkward access to accented characters in French (and in other languages);
• intrusive formatting features (designed for office-use, rather than academic writing);
• problems of compatibility between different software packages (sometimes, between different versions of the same package), between different file formats.

Using word-processors has the further advantage of enabling you to familiarize yourself with the use of computers, which is an important skill in itself. Software packages, such as Word, tend in fact to change fairly rapidly; what is perhaps most desirable is to learn how computer programs behave in general and to become confident about using packages for specific purposes and about manipulating relevant features they may contain. For students of most humanities subject, touch-typing is an invaluable skill: it means you can concentrate on what you're writing and not on the keyboard. Even with the advent of voice-controlled software, skill in typing is likely to continue to be useful (will you really want to dictate your essays? can you readily produce dictation in coherent and well-formed sentences?). Touch-typing can nowadays be learnt using the computer itself: a range of learning packages are available on CD-ROM and are sometimes offered for free with issues of computer magazines.

Writing directly onto the screen is a matter of some skill. You may find that you will continue to need to plan and perhaps even to draft your essay with pen and paper. Try to experiment with approaches to drafting and writing to see what suits you and your projects best.

Remember to save your work frequently as you write and to keep a back-up copy of your file (e.g. on a separate floppy disk).

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Titles, headings, paragraphs

A word-processor can facilitate the transparent organization of your work in that you can systematically associate features termed Styles in Word with titles, headings and paragraphs. In the first place, you should view your Word screen in Normal mode:

1. draw down the View menu;
2. click on Normal.

The screen may be organized so as to enable you to see which style you wish to apply at any given moment:

1. draw down the Tools menu;
2. click on Options;
3. set the Style width area (here 0.97")
4. click on OK.

As you write and edit your work, you may associate styles with titles, headings or quotations:

1. draw down the Format menu;
2. click on Style;
3. select the style you wish to use, e.g. Title or Heading 3, as appropriate;
4. click on Apply.

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Accents

For work written in French, or for quotations in French in essays written in English, you will be expected to produce correctly accented characters. A French version of your software program and a French keyboard will enable you to do so with ease, but these are rare resources. It is more likely that you will have to use menus or combinations of keystrokes (in Word, these are called shortcut keys). Here goes: if you use menus, you proceed as follows:

1. draw down the Insert menu;
2. click on Symbol;
3. click on Symbols (as distinct from Special characters);
4. select the accented character you require and click on Insert;
5. finally, click on Close, and resume typing.

This is a cumbersome procedure, but it will enable you to find most, if not all, of the accented characters you will require. A simpler method of inserting these characters is by using the shortcut keys and the main ones that you will need are quite easy to memorize. In general, you obtain an accented character by pressing the Ctrl key in combination with one other key, followed by the letter (lower or upper case) which you wish to insert. Some examples:

• é=Ctrl + ', e
• É=Ctrl + ', E
• à=Ctrl + `, a
• ù=Ctrl + `, u
• ê=Ctrl + ^, e
• ë=Ctrl + :, e
• ç=Ctrl + ,, c

Each of these key-combinations, and many others, are indicated in the Symbol box described above.

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Quotations

Most quotations will need to be typed (or keyed) directly into your text. A common problem is inaccurate quotations: print out a final draft of your essay and check all of your quotations against your original sources. Remember to include precise page references for all quotations (and other references to sources which you may use).

Longer quotations (that is, longer than about forty words of prose, or two or more lines of verse) are generally 'set off'. For this purpose you can use the style named Block Text:

1. draw down the Format menu and click on Styles;
2. select Block Text and click on Apply.

Increasingly, literary and other texts may be available online, particularly if they are now longer subject to copyright. Many French-language texts, for instance, are available at a site provided by the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Where such texts exist, you may be able to reproduce quotations by cutting and pasting them into your document (though you should make sure that the ease of doing so does not lead you into using excessively frequent or lengthy quotations). Proceed as follows:

1. use your mouse to select (and highlight) the text you wish to quote;
2. click on your right-hand mouse button and select Copy;
3. in your own document, place the cursor at the point where you wish to insert the text;
4. draw down the Edit menu and click on Paste Special;
5. select Formatted Text (RTF) and click on OK.

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The final copy

The first page of the final copy of your essay should give your full name, your student number, your degree programme, the relevant module code and name, the date on which the essay is submitted and the essay title. You should use a font (or typeface) that is easily read, e.g. Times New Roman, Garamond, and a point-size that is not smaller than twelve (go to the Format menu, choose Font, and use the relevant buttons to choose a font and size).

Make use that you print your final copy with page numbers and wide margins, so that your teacher can write comments and queries (go to the File menu, click on Page Setup, click on Margins, and specify margins of at least one inch all round; next, click on Insert, choose Page Numbers, choose where you wish the page numbers to appear, and press OK).

Try to make sure that each paragraph of your essay deals with one main point. At the end of each paragraph, you should press the Enter key once (i.e. do not leave a blank line between paragraphs), and the first line of each new paragraph should be indented once (using the Tab key). Where you use headings, these should be presented in bold: on the Formatting toolbar, click on the upper-case B before you start typing the heading, and click on it again (to turn bold off) when you finish. By convention, the first paragraph of an essay, or of a new section (following a heading), is not indented.

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Style

The stylesheet provided by the Department of French provides further guidance on the presentation of your work and the conventions you should follow in writing quotations, in citing your sources and in providing a bibliography (a version of this document is also available for printing). Word (like other word-processing programs) provides features which will enable you to fulfil these requirements. Quotations first: Word will allow you to produce so-called ‘smart’ quotation marks using the following shortcut keys:

• opening quotation mark: Ctrl + `,`
• closing quotation mark: Ctrl=','

Quotation marks should also be used, in footnotes and bibliographies, for the titles of essay-length pieces, or complete poems. When citing or referring to sources, it is preferable to use footnotes, rather than endnotes (it spares your reader the need to shuffle backwards and forwards between the pages as each note comes up). Word will number each footnote in sequence automatically and should place them in the correct place at the foot of the relevant page (it helps if you keep your notes concise and notes should be used in any case purely for the purpose of giving references and not for more or less lengthy digressions). To insert a note, proceed as follows:

1. click on the Insert menu;
2. click on Footnote;
3. select Footnote and click on OK;
4. type the text of your note and, once you have completed it, use the mouse to return the cursor to your text.

In your notes and your bibliography, the titles of full-length works should be given in italics: on the Formatting toolbar, click on the button with the upper-case I, and key in the title; click again on the same button to turn off italics once you have finished.

Each essay should contain separate bibliographies of primary and secondary sources used (see stylesheet), given according to the surname of the author, with the titles of works given in quotation marks or italics, as appropriate. Word will sort your primary and secondary bibliographies alphabetically, provided that each item is contained in a separate paragraph. Proceed as follows:

1. use the mouse to select and highlight the items in your primary or secondary bibliography (excluding any headings);
2. click on Table, and select Sort;
3. choose Sort by, Paragraphs, Text, Ascending, and click on OK.

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