Table Of Contents
The table of contents (TOC) is the roadmap to each portion of your writing. Whether you're writing a large essay or a potential bestseller, the table of contents will allow readers to locate specific information or revisit their favorite parts within the text. Depending on the nature of your writing, there are a few different formatting options for you to explore. Let's examine various table of contents examples.
TOC Examples
When might you be required to formulate a table of contents? The first is a formal essay for school, depending on the length of the work. For example, if you're writing an in-depth, multi-page essay or a master's thesis, a table of contents will add an air of professionalism to your writing. On the other hand, if this is a short, five-paragraph essay on the history of the Galapagos Islands, a table of contents will not be necessary.
A table of contents is a useful feature to have in long documents, such as a thesis, to allow readers to quickly find what section they are looking for. Creating a table of contents, however, can be a tricky task, especially when you have to keep on updating the page numbers. The Table of Contents is not only important, it’s even a way to hook half-interested readers, especially if you’re an author marketing themselves on online self-publishing sites. Most fiction novels need one, non-fiction novels like how-to’s, cooking books and compilations definitely need one, theses and reports are much more professional. Create tables of contents in books. For best results, be sure to do the following before creating a. Go to the place you would like your table to be, then click on the references tab at the top of the page. 3 Click the option on the far left of the page which says 'table of contents' and select the design you want. A blank table should now have been inserted into the blank space in your document, this is your table of contents. The Table of Contents in a document acts as a map for the reader, making it easier for them to find information in the document based on title and page number. A good Table of Contents should be organized, easy to read and simple to use. You can write a Table of Contents manually on your computer or have a word processing tool create it for you.
Perhaps, when you graduate, you'll move on to write textbooks or novels. There, too, you'll want to include a table of contents at the start of your work. Think about it. How many times have we flipped open our textbooks and searched the table of contents for pertinent material? Likewise, when reading a fiction or non-fiction work, a table of contents allows readers to jump around to the sections that interest them the most.
Single Level TOC
If you're wondering how to write a table of contents, the first decision you have to make is a matter of depth. How detailed do you want (or need) to be? Will a broad chapter summation work? Or, will you want to offer various subsections, too?
Let's begin in the broadest sense. Here, we have a single level table of contents for individual sections of the work, or individual chapters. You'll want to include a series of dots to make it easier for the reader's eye to note the corresponding page number.
Table Of Contents Apa
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Subdivided TOC
Given that the contents above covers an expansive array of information, you might want to break some of those sections into subsections. The formatting for that would be as follows:
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Multi-Level TOC
Of course, you can continue to include as many subheadings as you need. If you go in-depth into the various types of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, then you can include each type as its own subheading.
Just note that, while the table of contents is meant to direct the readers, you only want to highlight the most important sections. Too many levels can make things unnecessarily complex, voiding the purpose of the table of contents. A multi-level table of contents would look something like:
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Academic TOC
Let's look at a table of contents specific to academic writing. The above contents can work for academic writing or novel writing. Often, in academic writing, each heading is numbered and labeled. Of course, you'll want to check for samples based upon your instructor's preferred style of writing, like AP Style, MLA, or Chicago Manual of Style.
If you're submitting your paper electronically, you can even link each section to the appropriate page number, allowing readers to jump right to that section with a click of the mouse. As a rough estimation, a table of contents for an essay might look something like this:
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TOC Summary
A great table of contents comes in many shapes and sizes. While it depends on the length of the work (and the style guide you're bound to), there are a few common denominators to keep in mind. Here's a little checklist for you to run through when all is said and done.
- Use title case for each heading. That is, capitalize every word, excluding articles, preposition, or conjunctions.
- Include dots to allow the readers eye to scan from the section to the page number with ease.
- If this is an academic paper, number each section and subsection.
- Indent each subsection under its parent section.
- If this is an electronic submission, link the title of each section to the corresponding page within the work.
- Note that each section and subsection should align with the body of the essay. For example, in the body of the paper, if section 6.0 on 'paragraphs' uses 'Heading 2' in Microsoft Word and section 6.1 on 'descriptive paragraphs' uses 'Heading 3,' you'll know to include subheadings in your table of contents.
- If this is a book or novel, you'll have to decide on clever titles for each of your chapters (or simply go by Chapter One, Chapter Two, and so forth). However, if this is an academic paper, your table of contents should only include actual sections and subsections from the work itself.
The table of contents is the roadmap to each portion of your writing. Whether you're writing a large essay or a potential bestseller, the table of contents will allow readers to locate specific information or revisit their favorite parts within the text. Depending on the nature of your writing, there are a few different formatting options for you to explore. Let's examine various table of contents examples.
Total Table Dominance
Creating a table of contents is a matter of organization and precision. Remember, you worked hard to create an in-depth study on a certain topic. Allow readers to pinpoint certain components of your information with a flip of the page or a click of the mouse. For more on the mastery of academic writing, enjoy this in-depth study on the topic. If you're writing a book, move on and explore the other parts of a book.
M.A. Education
How to create a table of contents link to pages in Word document?
In Word, most of time, you may type a large of contents into the document. And for reading pages better, you may split them into several parts, such as list of figures, list of tables, abstract and so on. But have you ever tried to create a table of contents’ links to pages as below screenshot shown, so that you can quickly go to the specific part while clicking at the link? In this tutorial, I introduce the method on list a table of clickable contents in Word document.
Create a table of contents link to relative pages in Word
1. Firstly, use Styles under Home tab consistently throughout your document to create your own structure in your document.
In this article, my structure looks like this:
- List of Figures (Heading 6)
- List of Tables (Heading 6)
- Acknowledgements (Heading 6)
- Abstract (Heading 6)
- 1. Introduction (Heading 1)
- 1.1 Introduction sub-section (Heading 2)
- 1.2 Introduction sub-section (Heading 2)
- 1.3 Introduction sub-section (Heading 2)
- 1.3.1 Sub-section (Heading 3)
- 2. Hypotheses and Goals (Heading 1)
2. Now place the cursor at the position you want to insert the table of linkable contents, click References > Table of Contents > Custom Table of Contents.
3. In the Table of Contents dialog, keep Show page numbers, Right align page numbers and Use hyperlinks instead of page numbers options checked, click Options.
How To Create A Table Of Contents In Word
4. In the Table of Contents Options dialog, give the level to the relative heading you use, in my case, I give the Heading 1 and Heading 6 the level 1.
5. Click OK > OK. Now the list of contents link to page have been created. You can press Ctrl key to display the clicking hand , then click at the content to jump to the relative page.
Tabbed browsing & editing multiple Word documents/Excel workbooks as Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explore 10! |
You may be familiar to view multiple webpages in Firefox/Chrome/IE, and switch between them by clicking corresponding tabs easily. Here, Office Tab supports similar processing, which allow you to browse multiple Word documents or Excel workbooks in one Word window or Excel window, and easily switch between them by clicking their tabs. |
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