Creating Custom Paragraph Heading Styles in Microsoft Word

Generally, papers written for nursing classes and journals require the use of APA citation style.  APA requires the use of Times New Roman 12 for the body and paragraph headings.  The term paragraph headings is often a point of confusion.  What does it mean?

Just a couple of steps to clarify. 

1. Open any journal and notice how articles are written.  Look for the different sections of the article.  Examples may be abstract, review of literature, methods, conclusion or summary and references.  The examples are paragraph headings.  
2. Next reflect on a paper you have written or are writing.  Outline the paper.  The outline may look like the example below:

I.  Abstract
II. Title of the Paper (introduction)
III.  Review of the Literature
       A.  Historical
       B.  Current
IV. Relevance to Nursing
       A. Example one.
       B. Example two.
           a. 
           b.

Each level of the paper is a paragraph heading. 

• The roman numerals are all APA Heading 1.  They would be centered, boldface, and title case (first letter of each word is capitalized)
• The capital letters (A, B, C, etc.) are all APA Heading 2.  They would be left-aligned and boldface
• The small case letters (a, b, c, etc.) are all APA Heading 3.  They would be boldface, indented, sentence case (only first letter of first word is capitalized), end with a period, and begin the paragraph.  
• If there were two of more subcategories of Heading 3, the subcategories represent Heading 3.  They would be indented, boldface, italics, sentence case, end with a period, and begin the paragraph.

Rather than format each paragraph heading as you write, it is easier to let Word to the work for you.  The example below uses Word 2013 on a Windows computer, but the process is similar with Word 2010, and Word 2011 on the Mac.

Create a custom style for each APA heading that will appear in your Style menu.  You can open Word and type the Heading number, format it for APA with Times New Roman, boldface and specifications for the different levels, each on a separate line.  See the example below:

Next, click on the heading menu and select Create a Style for each heading level.  See the example below:

 

When you are finished, the styles should show up in your style menu.  I titled each style as APAH1, APAH2, APAH3, and APAH4.

Now, try out each level.  Type a paragraph heading, highlight and click a style.  If you have any errors, simply, delete and re-create.