A stylish and professional Table of Contents

A Word document has to look good. Presentation is after all a major part of any project. There is no point in putting so much effort into the research, and then making a mess of the presentation with the result that the supervisors are unimpressed with the work that the student has put in. That is why once the words have been put down on the document, the next step is to make sure that the document looks presentable and professional. 



In this regard, the Table of Contents is an important aspect that the students will have to take care of. The first place that the eyes of whoever is reading the documents will go to is the Table of Contents. This part will have to be neat, informative, and professional. How is that achieved? 

MS Word makes life easy for the writers by providing them with several options in terms of style and format for making the Table of Contents. The best part about all these in-built options is that the table can also be made quickly. Let us assume that the student is working on a project which has to be completed within a short period and he does not have much time. He needs to prepare a Table of Contents quickly. He cannot afford to painfully format and create every aspect of the Table of Contents himself. He will need some help. This is where the automatic options come in useful. The maker of the document simply has to choose one of the options that he has been given. The options for the Table of Contents can be found in the References section. 

In the Home tab, there are many style options given, and the maker can use these documents to modify and customize his Table of Contents. It is also possible to automatically update the Table of Contents as and when more material is added to the document. 

It is important that the student start making the Table of Contents from the very beginning of the project. There are many projects where the content runs into thousands and thousands of pages. After a while the writer himself loses track of which section is supposed to go where. If he were to start making the Table of Contents when all the writing has been done then he will find it to be an impossible task. That is why he should keep updating it as and when he is adding new material. 

While there are many styles given for making the table, and there is also some customizing that can be done by the writer himself, it is important to choose a style that suits the audience of the content. It will not do to make a fancy table for material that is serious and has been written for a serious audience. In case some guidance is needed, then it is possible to look through the Tables created on other documents and see what kind of styles have been used.