How do I create a list of tables or figures for APA?

[biohelixx]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Processor: Intel Hi,

I'm trying to create a list of figures and a list of tables for a dissertation (required, can't get around it) that follows APA formatting.

My problem is that every time I try to do it using the caption and insert index and tables functions, it lists the word Figure for each one and transfers the italicization of 'Figure 1' as well.

The list must include the number of each figure, as well as the title, but in normal font.

I think you may have answered this for i_love_macs in April, but I got info overload and couldn't understand it, and I wasn't 100% certain he was asking the same question either.

I hope this made sense and that you can help me soon, my deadline to get these final revisions completed is looming.

Thanks a million in advance for your help!
Melanie

 

[John_McGhie_[MVP]]

Word's list of Figures is actually generated by the Table of Contents
Generator.

The generator looks for a "SEQ" field containing the label "Figure" and then
replicates anything in the style "Caption" into the List of Figures.

So if the word "Figure" does not appear in the caption, it won't appear in
the LOF. And you're right: the Generator copies DIRECT formatting, but not
STYLE formatting. So if you directly format your caption to have the word
"Figure" in italics, the italics will be passed into the LOF.

If you need more information, please ask.

Hope this helps

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Processor: Intel Hi,

I'm trying to create a list of figures and a list of tables for a dissertation
(required, can't get around it) that follows APA formatting.

My problem is that every time I try to do it using the caption and insert
index and tables functions, it lists the word Figure for each one and
transfers the italicization of 'Figure 1' as well.

The list must include the number of each figure, as well as the title, but in
normal font.

I think you may have answered this for i_love_macs in April, but I got info
overload and couldn't understand it, and I wasn't 100% certain he was asking
the same question either.

I hope this made sense and that you can help me soon, my deadline to get these
final revisions completed is looming.

Thanks a million in advance for your help!
Melanie

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[John_McGhie_[MVP]]

Hi Melanie:

Mmmm.... My Grandmother always used to say "A bad workman blames his
tools". I don't know why used to say that so often to ME!

Word is perfectly capable of producing any format of List of Figures you
wish. Remember I said that Word copies the DIRECT formatting into the List
of Figures, but not the STYLE formatting?

That was my suggestion to you: that you arrange it so that the Caption style
is in Italic, then use Direct Formatting to format the part of the caption
that you want in normal text as non-italic.

I thought a candidate for a Master's Degree would understand that ‹ maybe
you had a late night?

1) So get into Format>Style...

2) Select the Caption style

3) Change its Font to Italic.

4) Now select the TEXT of each caption and hit Command + i to turn it
non-italic.

5) Do them all like that,

6) then update your List of Figures.

Job's done!

The formatting of your List of Figures is now controlled entirely by your
"Table of Figures" style. You can use Format>Style to change that one to
your liking also.

When Word claims to offer "APA Style" I suspect it's speaking in relation to
Citations, which it will also do in APA Style.

Yes, Word does have two other ways you could generate a List of Figures:
either using TC fields, or using cross-references. Either is a serious
amount of work, and simply not worth it, for what you are doing.

Hope this helps

Okay, then I guess I'm wondering if it's possible to generate a list of
figures without using the TOC Generator, because it's totally screwing me up
for APA formatting, and the master's committee won't accept an excuse of,
"Word is too stupid to actually follow APA rules, even though it says it does
and I've set to do do!"

I wouldn't even know how to go about setting up a manual list that would look
halfway uniform (something about tab stops maybe?).

Thanks for your continued assistance.
Melanie

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[CyberTaz]

<snip>

When Word claims to offer "APA Style" I suspect it's speaking in relation to
Citations, which it will also do in APA Style.

<snip>

Not to mention that Melanie may be striving for 6th Edition APA which wasn't
published until July 2009, more than 18 months after the release of Office
2008. I know there were a number of significant revisions but I'm not sure
whether this issue may have been affected.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John_McGhie_[MVP]]

Hi Melanie:

Yeah, we are talking past one another. You said you wanted "APA Style"
As far as I can tell without paying for the entire APA Publication guide and
looking on Page 302, that would be "Figure 1. Inside the Box, Melanie,
2010."

Omitting the Caption Label from the Table of Figures would be a local
variation.

Still, if that's what they want, of course, Word can do that too...

A figure caption has four parts:

The "Label" ‹ "Figure"

The "Chapter Number" ‹ Not used in APA style

The Figure Number ‹ a SEQ field

The Caption Text ‹ The text of the caption.

In the example above, "Figure" is the label, "1" is the Figure Number, and
"Inside the Box, Melanie, 2010" is the Caption Text.

To generate the format you want, it is simply necessary to remove the
"Label" from your captions, but only in the List of Figures.

Let's try the easy work-around first. It's not the sort of thing you would
admit to doing, except at a Publisher's Anonymous meeting, but it works...

1) Delete your existing List of Figures

2) Use Insert>Index and Tables>Table of Figures to put it back in, but THIS
TIME, uncheck the box that says "Include Label and Number".

3) Now, click in one of the entries in the table and go to Format>Style...

4) Choose the Table of Figures style and then drop down the Format list and
choose Numbering.

5) Choose the "1." sample of numbering, and OK your way out.

The reason you would not admit to doing this is because the numbers that
appear are the numbers of the paragraphs in the List of Tables, they are not
the sequence numbers returned from the captions.

Hopefully (!) the numbers in your figure captions start at "1" and there are
none missing, so the effect is the same, and it's deliciously simple to do
it. The reason you use Format>Style to add the numbers instead of just
clicking the Numbering button is that if the numbering is part of the style
for the generated table, it will stick when the table updates.

If (shock, horror!) your figure caption numbering is such that you cannot
use this technique, get back to me and I will explain how to do this using
TC fields, but it's a bit of a chore

Hope this helps

Okay then, apparently I wasn't paying close enough attention to what you had
written and I was reading...sorry about that. But what you told me to do does
not solve my, I think.

Not to beat on a dead horse, but that still leaves me with the issue of the
entire caption appearing in the LOF, when I have been told that's bad (that's
how I had it originally).

This is what it has to look like:

Figure

1. Inside the Box, Melanie, 2010...............1
2. Outside the Box, Melanie, 2010..............2
3. Journey, Melanie, 2010......................3

But since the caption has to read

Figure 1. Inside the Box, Melanie, 2010.

I don't see how I can make the program include only part of that.

Or are we talking past one another?

Melanie

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[b.matthews]

Hi Melanie, I feel your pain because I am going through the same debacle and Google searched the cure for my woes. Needless to say, I don't have the exact answer, but I do know (as far as I can tell) Word is not set up to handle figures and tables separately without creating an offensive caption, which is not acceptable by APA standards.

Solution, no! But what I've done is copy/pasted the formatting from the table of contents and/or table of figures and reconfigured it to work for listof figures. Although this allieviates the tab issue, it involves a keen eye and the extra element of revision. Plus in the case of a ton of tables (taking up more than one page) you will have to manipulate the page numbers, print twice and then combine the docs in a printed form. Hopefully, thiswill NOT be your situation because it is a headache!! Another option if to create a table, format, then erase all of the visible lines.

As for John, you are a false and unwarranted jackass, who doesn't know jack-shit about APA or Word. The next time you want to try to be helpful and stroke your own ego with the duality of a true douchebag at least have the courtesy to check your facts and gain some experience with the task at hand before turning into a blog-boasting, egocentric jerk. Melanie is dead on and the answer is not simple. What you do not understand, simpleton, is that APA requires table of contents, figures, and tables separately (i.e., formatted separately and listed separately) WITHOUT captions. As far as the deepest, darkest corners of Google, Word does not account for this adjustment. It is quite possible that Word has this capable, but the Google World at large and Word Help do not know the answer and neither do you. Stick to talking about something you know about (e.g., the orbit of your own ego).

Hope this helps, Mel!! I want to kill APA, Word, and my thesis, but we will persevere!!
Beth

 

[lhollingshead]

Okay, I know I'm late for Melanie. And John was a complete jerk. Thanks, Beth, for calling him out.

For anybody who is also searching for the solution, I think I solved the List of Tables (APA). At least so that I can manage the list without too much intervention. Here are the steps I took. Hope they are explicit enough to be useful:

1. On the Home tab, pull out the Style, window, by clicking on Change Styles at the far right. At the bottom left corner of this new window, click on the button that allows you to create a new style. Give it a name (eg. List of Tables). Set up the characteristics. Style based on Normal will match your font for the rest of your document. Also, Style for following para should probably also be set to Normal.

Click on OK.

2. Go to the location where you want to insert the list. Place your cursor. Then click on the References Tab, click on the drop down menu for Tableof Contents (Far left). At the bottom, click on Insert Table of Contents (yes, I'm assuming you already have a table of contents. this won't be a conflict). Click on the Options button. Remove the 1,2,3... from the TOC Level boxes. Put a 1 in the box next to the style you created in step 1 (List of Tables?)

Click OK.
Click OK.
If a query comes up asking you "Do you want to replace the selected table of contents?", Click NO.

3. Go to the table you want to put a title on. Enter the Table #, press shift-enter (soft return--this is really important) and then turn on italics and then type the caption. (You'll have to maintain your own table #'s. Highlight the entire caption, including the line above that says Table # and from the Home tab, select that style you created in step #1.

4. Last step -- go back to that table you created. Right click and select update. Voila! You can try updating your TOC and confirm that it is not affected. Shouldn't be as long as you use your styles in the right place.

The soft return in the multi-line caption header is what allows it to show up as a single line in the List of Tables.

I haven't solved the List of Figures yet.

Lynne