How to Format Tables in the American University Thesis and

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How to Format Tables in the American University

Thesis and Dissertation Template

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Pasting Tables into the Template (3 Steps)

Creating and Formatting a Table from Scratch (12 Steps)

Formatting Table Notes

Pasting Tables into the Template (3 Steps)

STEP 1. If you already have tables made in Excel or another Word document, you can highlight them, copy them,

and paste them into your thesis or dissertation document. After pasting, you will see a little clipboard appear at

the bottom right of the pasted material. Open them and experiment with the different options to see which

gives you the best results. You may still have to do some formatting afterwards. Make sure you consult your

discipline’s preferred style guide for details on border lines, spacing, data alignment, capitalization, and so forth.

If you are pasting from Excel and want to paste your table as an image, you should turn off the gridlines first in

Excel (go to View and uncheck the box that says “Gridlines”). Pasting as an image is sometimes helpful for large

appendix tables, assuming your formatting is clean in the original document.

STEP 2. Check to make sure your table is within the allowable margin area by turning on the page gridlines (go to

the View Tab, then check the box that says Gridlines toward the left of the screen. If the box is not visible, click

Show within the View tab and then check the box that says Gridlines).

STEP 3. Check your discipline’s preferred style guide (Turabian, APA, etc.) and make adjustments as necessary.

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Creating and Formatting a Table from Scratch (11 Steps)

The following formatting shows the basic formatting shared by both Turabian and APA tables. Please see those

guides or your department’s preferred style guide for details and requirements specific to your discipline.

STEP 1. It is not recommended to type rows of data into the main text and use the TAB key to create spaces. This

makes the tables very difficult to format and often causes misrepresentations of the data. You can insert a table

as follows:

STEP 2. Turn on the Table Gridlines (not the Page Gridlines).

1. Click the Insert tab.

2. Click Table.

3. Choose table size

(you can add more

rows or columns later).

1. Put the cursor

anywhere inside any

table in the document.

2. Open the Table

Layout tab.

3. Select View Gridlines. You

won’t notice a change at the

moment because all cells are

covered in border lines, but

you will need the gridlines in

the next step.

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STEP 3. Remove all border lines from the table.

STEP 4. Add a top and bottom border to the first row.

1. Highlight the

entire table.

2. Open the Table

Design tab.

3. Open the

Borders menu.

4. Choose

No Border.

1. Highlight just

the top row.

2. Open the Table

Design tab.

3. Open the

Borders menu.

4. Choose Bottom Border, then

repeat Steps 2 and 3 and choose

Top Border. You should now

have two black lines, one at the

top and one at the bottom of the

top row of the table.

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STEP 5. Add a bottom border to the table.

STEP 6. Add a table title. Consult your discipline’s preferred style guide for how to format the table number and

title and how to capitalize and punctuate appropriately. Highlight the table title and choose Table Title from the

styles boxes in the Home tab. This will ensure that the table title appears in the List of Tables.

5. Now, consult your department’s preferred style guide

(Turabian, APA, etc.) and add italics, line spacing, etc. as

needed to your table title. If you add line spaces between

the table number and table title, press SHIFT + ENTER to

use soft carriage returns (this keeps the table number and

title together in the List of Tables).

1. Highlight table title.

4. Choose

Table Title.

3. Open the Styles

menu by clicking

the second down

arrow to the right

of the white boxes

(not shown).

1. Highlight just

the bottom row.

2. Open the Table

Design tab.

3. Open the

Borders menu.

4. Choose

Bottom Border.

2. Open the

Home tab.

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Your table should now look something like this:

STEP 7. Your basic table is almost ready for data entry. By default, the table will be outside the left and right

margins of the document. To see where the allowable margin area is, first activate the page gridlines (these are

different from the table gridlines).

1. Click the View tab.

2. Click Show (if

necessary).

3. Check the box

that says Gridlines.

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STEP 8. Drag the right and left table borders in to be even or within the page borders (see image below).

Your table should now be lined up with the page margins, like this:

Now, you will probably want to turn off the page gridlines (but leave the Table gridlines) to avoid having so

many crisscrossing lines on the screen while you work.

1. Drag the leftmost table

line to the right, even

with the gray gridded line

that marks the beginning

of the printable area.

Then drag the right side

of the table to the left to

meet the other page

margin.

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STEP 9. Now you are ready to enter your data into the table. Whenever you have the cursor inside of a table,

you can access a variety of table formatting options in the Table Layout and Design tabs.

STEP 10 (if needed). If you have decimal data in your columns, both Turabian and APA require that you align the

cells vertically on the decimal point:

1. Click this little square

until the decimal tab

appears: .

3. Click one time on

the ruler to set the

decimal tab. Then

drag the tab left or

right as needed.

2. Highlight the

column data. Left-

align the data (Ctrl +

L on the keyboard or

from the Home tab).

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STEP 11 (if needed). If you have word data that extends beyond one line in a cell, it often improves readability

to indent the second and following lines:

STEP 12. There are several other intricacies to properly formatting tables, such as aligning numerical and text

data, proper capitalization of headers and cells, abbreviations, table spanners, different types of table notes, etc.

For these issues and more, consult your discipline’s preferred style guide.

Formatting Table Notes

A Table Note style is included in the styles menu in the Home tab at the top of your screen.

First, add your notes according to your discipline’s preferred style guide (both Turabian and APA use very similar

styles for general table notes, specific notes, and probability notes, and Turabian includes additional information

on source notes).

Once you have followed your style guide’s rules, you can highlight the table note(s) and apply the Table Note

Style from the Styles menu in the Home tab to reduce the font size to 10 pt. If you decide to make changes to

the table-note font size or line spacing, you can do that to all table notes at once by modifying the style as

explained in the Customizing Your Headings section of the Heading Styles Instruction Guide.

1. Highlight the

column data. Left-

align the data (Ctrl +

L on the keyboard or

from the Home tab).

2. Drag the triangle

over a tick.

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An example of general, specific, and probability notes in both APA and Turabian style is as follows, with the

exception that APA uses a period instead of a colon after the word Note in the general note.

Table 1. Table Title

Column heading Column heading Column heading Column heading

Row heading

An example of

word content.

0.73

Row heading

Example text

1.25

2,073

Row heading

Example text

13.22

459

Note: This is for general notes that apply to the whole table, statements that the table was adapted or reproduced from another

source (in that case include full citation), and sample sizes. Other notes appear in order as follows.

Superscripted letters are used for specific notes, which apply only to a column, row, or cell.

If you have more than one specific note, just keep going down the alphabet.

*p < .05 **p < .01 ***p < .001 (example of traditional format for significance note but modify as needed).