No doubt by now anyone in further education has come across the latest version of Microsoft’s word processor. The new ribbon layout has managed to confuse students to the point of reverting to previous versions. It isn’t however a step back. The new ribbon (after a little practice and adjustment to thinking) is actually easier to use, although it requires you to relearn where all the tools and buttons are.
One of the nice features of the ribbon is the easy access to the citing tool. It allows you to add sources and add citations to text easily, and can even produce a nice little bibliography at the end for you, taking away much of the work needed balancing references.
One of the down sides to this update is that there is only so many formats included with word, and my university uses a style that isn’t included. I quickly found the folder where word stores it’s reference styles, and used a little Google-fu to find a nice little site. This site has a nice selection of extra styles which include quite a few Harvard referencing styles. Although one problem is that word doesn’t fully support all the features of this style and a little ‘hack’ is needed (running a tool over the document after its finished). Other styles have been achieved with just the xml.
For people with a bit more XML know-how they could try creating their own with one of the tools on the site above or just editing an existing style in [Program Files]/Microsoft Office/Office12/BibliographyStyle/
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