So I'm watching this on10.net video right now. And I also just finished writing a paper for English 120. With a bibliography. And about half-way through the video, they start talking about the bibliography features of Word 2007. I don't get that excited about a whole lot of stuff, but when I saw them demonstrating how to make a bibliography, I definitely did. This is a killer feature. Here are the essentials:
- You add your sources using a basic data-entry form. Of course you can choose the type of source, such as website or book or even patent. This feature alone would be useful for managing sources, even if it did nothing with the data.
- You type your report and use the ribbon button for "Insert Source" to select your source, and it automatically puts in a correctly formatted (punctuation and typesetting) citation. Excitement level goes up because citing sources just got a hell of a lot easier.
- Want a bibliography at the end? Just add it in using a document building block (sounds complicated, but after you've done it once it should be easy) and it will put all your sources correctly formatted. I assume this also updates if you add new sources in the source manager. Excitement level increases significantly.
- Did you enter that name wrong? Just go change it in the sources manager, and it will automatically update it in the citation and the bibliography. More excitement.
- Oops, did you do everything in APA format instead of MLA? Do you spend the next 20 minutes switching underlining, punctuation, and information order just to get those 10 points back in class? No, you have Word 2007. Just change the selection on a drop-down to MLA (or one of 8 or so others), and all the formatting AUTOMATICALLY UPDATES. Excitement level reaches all time high.
Now, I realize that other programs are capable of generating bibliographies, but I doubt any of them are as polished as this is. And I really doubt any of them have such tight integration with a word processor and will automatically update all the stuff we just talked about.
So that paper that I just wrote? Yeah, it was horribly formated, lacked data, and I didn't really care how good it was. Will I lose points? Probably not. But you can be sure that my next bibliography (and citations) is going to kick some serious ass.