Format #1: Book Style

  1. The title ought to stand out, and be much larger (and use either a plainer or a fancier font) than the regular text of the work. For this sheet, I used Calibri size 24. Your title should be specific enough that it would be utterly wrong if it were stuck on someone else’s written piece. Note: “Macbeth Essay” or “Introductory paragraph” are not titles. They are just labels. So make a title. Macbeth: A Deranged Man With A Dark Plan. Don’t copy the title from the assignment sheet. Make your own. Do not center or underline your title.
  2. An author would never leave his or her name until the end of the story. Yours will go second, right under the title. For this course, use the same font and size as your body text (see below) but italicize it to make it stand out. (Note: Italics are not a font. There is an I-shaped italicsbutton.)
  3. Size 12 fontfor the body text (everything but the title.)One of the serif fonts like Times New Roman. Acceptable substitutes include anything similar, for instance Garamond, Cambria, Century or Bookman Old Style. (NotCalibri. NotArial. NotComic Sans. They are sans serif, lacking the little “feet”/decorations. They are for on-screen and for titles and headings.)
  4. Single-spaced.
  5. Drop Cap for the first paragraph. With books, new sections (for instance chapters), do not have indents. I have used Insert>Drop Caps to get the drop cap on the sample sheet. Do that.
  6. Indent your paragraphs by using [Tab]. You can also set the rulers at the top to allow you to make it auto-indent like I have done on my sample sheet. Standard book indenting is about four spaces. Note: you can’t drop cap and indent, so you’ll have to make sure your first paragraph isn’t indented before you can drop cap it.
  7. If you leave Word as it is, paragraphs will come out left justified (align left). For Book Style, instead they are “full justified” (Justify) to make them straight down the right margin as well as the left. This is done by Word adding random spaces into the text. The full justify button is the fourth one, to the right of align left, centre and align right.
  8. Look to have many paragraphs for every page of text. It breaks the page up and makes it more comfortable to read. A third of a page is about as long as a paragraph should ever, ever get. Essays need about five sentences per paragraph. Informal writing can have single-sentence paragraphs at times.
  9. Put automatic page numbering in the upper right-hand corner.
  10. No lines of empty space between paragraphs. Sometimes Word is set up to do automatic lines of empty space every single time you press [Enter.] Do NOT do that for Format #1 or 2. Wastes paper. Keep those line breaks to indicate sections of paragraphs, or for “scene changes.” To use line breaks properly, you can’t have that going onevery single paragraph. You turn that off here: