I have a paper due in about three hours. DH took the boys to school, usually piddles around the office for a bit, and comes home (he's off on Fridays). However, it's almost lunchtime and he's not back. He left his cell phone here so I can't call him. I suspect he's off taking pictures.

Anyway, I have 2 formatting problems with my paper that I can't figure out:
1) I have to have the page number centered at the bottom on the first page only and then in the upper right corner for all subsequent pages. I can't get that to work---it's on the bottom center AND upper right of every page.
2) I need to have a header at the top of everypage with my title in it. I can find how to do a header, but they are "prepackaged." How do I put in my own header?

Any help appreciated oh-so-much! Thanks!

By Insaneusmcwife on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 12:55 pm:

I got this from the Microsoft Assistant....For the header:
Insert headers and footers
Do one of the following:

Create the same header or footer for each page

On the View menu, click Header and Footer to open the header or footer area on a page.
To create a header, enter text or graphics in the header area.
To create a footer, click Switch Between Header and Footer on the Header and Footer toolbar to move to the footer area, and then enter text or graphics.
If necessary, format text by using buttons on the Formatting toolbar.
When you finish, click Close on the Header and Footer toolbar.

I'm still working on the 1st one.

By Insaneusmcwife on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 01:07 pm:

I can't figure it out but here is what I would do since you are pressed for time....

Cut the first page out of that document and paste it into another document. Set the page numbers the way you want them for each document but on the 2nd one set the page number to start at 2 or use a dummy page for page 1.

I hope that helps.

By Kate on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 01:11 pm:

Oh this brings back memories...isn't it utterly ridiculous that in order to get full credit a paper must be formatted so specifically?? Who cares?? I usually could never master this and would HAND WRITE the page numbers, LOL! Seriously, a paper really should just need to be typed neatly, using normal punctuation rules and indenting paragraphs and such. The rest of the stuff is just dumb. Good luck! (and you can always use white-out on the 'extra' page numbers...)

By Joy~bundles on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 01:11 pm:

On the first one, I believe you have to create a "Section Break". I haven't used Section Breaks in several years, but I think if you look in the Help Option, it will tell you how go about this.

By Pamt on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 01:22 pm:

Thanks Kristy for all of your help. DH just got home and saved the day! Whew!!!

By Insaneusmcwife on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 01:24 pm:

your welcome! I'm glad your getting it printed out in time.

By Dawnk777 on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 09:22 pm:

Word does make stuff HARD sometimes! I wish I could have helped, but I had to work today.

By Pamt on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 09:39 pm:

Oh this brings back memories...isn't it utterly ridiculous that in order to get full credit a paper must be formatted so specifically?? Who cares?? I usually could never master this and would HAND WRITE the page numbers, LOL! Seriously, a paper really should just need to be typed neatly, using normal punctuation rules and indenting paragraphs and such. The rest of the stuff is just dumb. Good luck! (and you can always use white-out on the 'extra' page numbers...)

Well, at this stage in the game it's not too ridiculous. I am supposed to be starting to churn out research for journal articles and all of the professional journals in my field or related fields follow APA (American Psychology Association) writing guidelines. So... they aren't doing it just to be picky, but to prepare me for being able to write and submit for publication. Still...it is a pain though!

The biggest aggravation was when I was getting my B.S. For my major in speech and hearing science and my 1st minor of psychology I had to write in APA. For my 2nd minor in English literature I had to write in MLA (Modern Language Association) formate. Switching between the two, which had very different ways of footnotes/endnotes, citing sources, etc. drove me crazy.

Thanks again all for helping! I turned it in at 2:30 this afternoon. I'm not pleased with the ending, but it is DONE, DONE, DONE!

By Karen~moderator on Saturday, May 13, 2006 - 10:09 am:

^5!!!!! It's behind you now. I saw this too late to be helpful - you had already posted that your DH was home to help, but I *was* going to tell you how to format the headers/footers! LOL

You have totally confused me with APA and MLA!!! Excuse me while I show my ignorance here.....

Seriously though, glad to hear it's done. Maybe you can relax a bit now?

By Dawnk777 on Saturday, May 13, 2006 - 10:23 am:

About APA Style American Psychological Association

When editors or teachers ask you to write in “APA style,” they do not mean writing style. They are referring to the editorial style that many of the social and behavioral sciences have adopted to present written material in the field.

Editorial style consists of rules or guidelines that a publisher observes to ensure clear and consistent presentation of written material. Editorial style concerns uniform use of such elements as

punctuation and abbreviations
construction of tables
selection of headings
citation of references
presentation of statistics
as well as many other elements that are a part of every manuscript
The American Psychological Association has established a style that it uses in all of the books and journals that it publishes. Many others working in the social and behavioral sciences have adopted this style as their standard as well.

Modern Language Association

MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (6th ed.) and the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (2nd ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.

Newspapers use the AP stylebook for their formatting.

In our newspaper, the caption under the picture would look like this:

UMBRELLAS WERE turned inside out, during yesterday's rainy and windy weather.

The first two words are always capped and formatted in bold!

By Cybermommyx4 on Saturday, May 13, 2006 - 01:49 pm:

MLA format is what is required in my kids' high school. The English teacher WILL NOT ACCEPT a paper that is not in the proper format (headers included)(their multiple-page reports have to have their last name and page number in the header..i.e. Smith 1, Smith 2, etc.) If the paper is one day late, it is 50% credit. HOWEVER, the kids know this and have never turned in a paper improperly formatted.

By Ginny~moderator on Saturday, May 13, 2006 - 02:27 pm:

Don't know much about the various formats, but I do loathe Microsoft Word. I have to use it at work and have learned lots of work-arounds, and the office IT and secretary-manager have set up lots of things that help a lot (like having the most used icons in the toolbar at the top), but at least twice a week I sit there fuming because something that would take me 30 seconds in WordPerfect takes me 20 minutes to work out in Word. I use WordPerfect at home unless it is something I have to email to someone who can only open Word documents. Even then, I create them in WordPerfect and do a save-as in Word and go in and fix up whatever formatting was messed up.

By Ginny~moderator on Saturday, May 13, 2006 - 02:29 pm:

By the way, with the page numbering, in my office's version of Word you can do something so the header doesn't appear on the first page, so I put the header in, click the box that won't let it show on the first page, and then I'd put the first page number in manually at the bottom - not using headers/footers. The option of making the first page a separate document would also work.

But, glad dh came home and sorted it out for you.