The use of the features of Microsoft Word (or Open Office) for automating the production a well structured, consistently formatted, long document (such as a project dissertation) is a skill that we don't formally teach here in Swansea. However, other Universities do teach this and I discovered a tutorial at the University of Waterloo in Canada that may help to address this ommission. The tutorial covers the use of Microsoft Word XP/2000 or 2007 to handle styles, numbering, cross referencing and citations as end notes. It comes with explanations and exercises that might well reward the time taken to study them.

Careful presentation of your project's background with the correct use of bibliographic data, citations and references can be one of the most important factors that turns a project dissertation from merely competent into one that is rated as outstanding. Our own Library and Information Services has a guide to bibliographic referencing that includes examples using both the numeric and Harvard author-date styles. The site also mentions the Endnote tool¹⁾ that can make the creating of bibliographies, citations and references simpler that it would otherwise be.

Also worth a look is a Firefox Web Browser plugin called zotero that provides similar features to Endnote at zero cost and is integrated right into your web browser.

The Study Skills page in the Student Services part of the website has further links to other useful resources. In particular the sections on Writing Scientifically, Dissertations and Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism are all pertinent. Careful though, resources cited there are often links to resources at other Universities.