Technical Writing, Drafting Journal Articles, Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations
If you have done any technical writing, you have probably discovered that Microsoft® Word comes with its challenges.
It doesn’t compress citations (i.e., [1-10]) and if you are not using a reference manager plug-in for Word (another reason to use a reference manager), then adding in your citations is a nightmare. And then there is formatting in Word, which can be its own special type of hell. But for some of us, there is no way around it. And that’s ok. Here are some things that I have found can help:
Download your reference manager plug-in for Word (Tutorial Video #1) or import your references into Word directly (Tutorial Video #2).
If you are writing large manuscripts (e.g., a thesis) in Word, write the chapters as separate documents to avoid issues. Word really doesn’t like it when documents start to get very large and when you start adding in lots of images and tables, it can make the file very large and hard to run. For more on how to do this and other information regarding Microsoft® Word and writing dissertations, you can go to the University of Michigan page.
Learn how to use the equation editor in Word and the shorthand typing to expedite writing out your equations. (Tutorial Video #3)
Take the time to set up your template upfront or downloading the correct format can help immeasurably and save you a lot of time in the long run.
Personally, I no longer use Word for research papers or journal articles, and I did not use it when I wrote my dissertation. Word had defeated me too many times before. I made the switch to LaTeX and I have never looked back, with one caveat – I use Word for freewriting because LaTeX has coding syntax you need to embed into it which can disrupt my flow when writing. When it comes to formatting any of my technical writing, it is all done in LaTeX. As someone who is not a coder, I was initially very intimidated by the prospect of using LaTeX. However, when one of my professors introduced me to Overleaf, I was hooked. Overleaf is a free, browser-enabled LaTeX compiler, template repository, and tutorial resource. If you have the time to try it out and learn and are willing to go through the growing pains of making mistakes and googling how to fix them, I highly recommend making the switch to LaTeX. Yes, you lose the GUI that you have in Word, but you gain so much more. I recently added my own dissertation template for Howard University onto the website. You can download it to your Overleaf project folder and edit it to meet your university’s formatting requirements. Additionally, any template can be modified or used as is. For some publications, you can even submit your journal articles directly from Overleaf.