Tag: How to Create an SBL-Style Table of Contents in Word

Creating a table of contents manually can be a pain and consume much more time and attention than it should.¹

Fortunately, you can let Word do the heavy lifting by creating a dynamic table of contents that updates automatically with your document.

1. Prepare your document.

Word can manage a table of contents multiple ways. Rather than discussing all of these, I’m going to describe what seems the simplest method.

So for the purposes of this tutorial, I’m going to assume two things:²

1. You’re using heading styles to format the headings within your document.
2. You’ve set up the page numbers for your table of contents in Word as described in the Student Supplement for The SBL Handbook of Style.

If either of these isn’t true, update your document accordingly.³ Then come back here, and go through the steps in the next section to add your table of contents.

2. Add your table of contents.

Once you have your document prepared:

2.1. Create your contents page header.

Place your cursor at the start of the page in your document where you want to insert your table of contents (e.g., the page numbered “ii”).

2.1.1. What SBL Style Requires

Then, type “Contents” at the top of this page. SBL style wants you to

1. place this term one inch from the top edge of the page,
2. center this heading across the page,
3. have the word “Contents” in all uppercase letters, and
4. have two blank lines between this heading and the start of your table of contents.⁴

2.1.2. How to Produce What SBL Style Requires

From this list, especially items 2–4 follow what SBL style asks for with your document’s primary headings (e.g., “Heading 1”).⁵ But you shouldn’t use your primary heading style to format the “Contents” heading. If you do, your automated table of contents will make its first entry “Contents.” 😛

To avoid this issue, however, you can format the “Contents” heading with the “TOC Heading” style. And just like any other style, you can adjust this style’s formatting to meet the requirements of SBL style. That way, it’ll be ready and waiting for you when you need to use it in a new project.

After you’ve typed and formatted this heading, place your cursor on the next line available for text below the heading.

2.2. Start inserting your table of contents.

Go to the “References” tab, find the “Table of Contents” section, and click the “Table of Contents” button.

Word has a few different tables of contents predefined. But it’ll probably be easiest for you to use the “Custom Table of Contents…” option at the bottom of the “Table of Contents” button menu.

This will open the “Table of Contents” tab in the “Table of Contents” dialog box. (The names are quite creative, aren’t they?)

2.3. Set the basic formatting for your table of contents.

Where you see “Tab leader,” change the option from “……” to “none.”

(If you’re following the Student Supplement, you’ll have the dotted leader only for your primary headings.⁶ So it’s easiest just to add them there rather than remove them everywhere else.)

Still on the “Table of Contents” tab in the “Table of Contents” dialog box, also find the “Show levels” option. Increase this number to “9.”

You may not have that many heading levels (and probably shouldn’t). But per the Student Supplement, the table of contents should include “every element of the paper that follows.”⁷

Increasing this number to the maximum now should prevent you from having to change it later or miss headings out of your table of contents.

Click “OK” to create your table of contents.

2.4 Review your initial table of contents.

At this point, you should see a table of contents in your document that looks something like the sample below.

Of course, what the table actually shows will depend on the headings you’ve included in your document.

If you don’t see what you were expecting, double check that you’ve used heading styles in the appropriate places and at the appropriate levels in the body of your document.

Add or change these where necessary (e.g., from “Heading 3” to “Heading 2”).

Also note that the casing for each line in the table of contents will be as it is in that heading, even though the heading might be formatted in all caps.

If you see capitals or lowercase where you were expecting the other, retype that heading in the body of your document, with the proper casing.

Your table of contents will update automatically at different times. But to force an update at any point, right click inside the table, and choose “Update Field,” then “Update entire table,” and click “OK.”

The individual lines of the table of contents are also linked to the corresponding places in your document. So to jump there, just Ctrl + click on a given line in the table.

Conclusion

At this point, you’re saving yourself a huge amount of time and effort managing your table of contents. You’re also able to use the table in Word to skip easily to different parts of your document.

But you may notice that the formatting of the table of contents isn’t yet quite what the Student Supplement is asking for.⁸ So you’ll want to take careful stock of how the formatting needs to be adjusted, which can be done with styles as well.

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1. Header image provided by Kaitlyn Baker. ↩

2. I’m also assuming you have a current version of Word via Office 365. These instructions are based on v16.0.12430.20046. They should work on other recent versions as well. But you’ll notice greater differences in the process if you have an older version of Word. ↩

3. If you need to paginate your table of contents differently, however, simply substitute your requirements in the appropriate steps below. ↩

4. The first three requirements are clear from Melanie Greer Nogalski et al., Student Supplement for The SBL Handbook of Style, Second Edition, ed. Joel M. LeMon and Brennan W. Breed, rev. ed. (Atlanta: SBL, 2015), §3.2. The fourth isn’t explicitly specified in the student supplement. So, in this case, SBL style defers to the authorities for Chicago style. And the spacing between the table of contents heading and the table itself is specified in Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers, ed. Wayne C. Booth et al., 9th ed., Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), §A.2.1.7. ↩

5. Cf. Nogalski et al., Student Supplement, §2.6. ↩

6. Nogalski et al., Student Supplement, §3.2. ↩

7. Nogalski et al., Student Supplement, §3.2. ↩

8. Nogalski et al., Student Supplement, §3.2. ↩

So you’re creating a dynamic table of contents in your document and want to format it as described in the Student Supplement for The SBL Handbook of Style.

You know you need to use styles to get the table of contents formatting to “stick.” But how?

If you’ve used heading styles, prepared an initial table of contents, and taken stock of what formatting needs adjustment, you can edit the relevant style in just 3 steps.

1. Open the “Styles” panel.

I’m assuming here that the formatting you need to change is what I’ve described.

If you need to make other adjustments, you can use the same principles described below to make those other changes too.

To start, go to the “Home” tab, and click the arrow in the lower right corner of the “Styles” section to show the styles panel.

2. Start to modify the “TOC 1” style.

Scroll in the alphabetical list of styles until you find the entry “TOC 1.”

Right click this listing, and choose “Modify….”

You’ll then see the “Modify Style” dialog box where you’ll need to make two changes.

2.1. Make “TOC 1” display in all capital letters.

First, go to “Format” (bottom left corner), and choose “Font….”

You’ll then see the “Font” dialog box.

Under “Effects” in the bottom third, find the option for “All caps,” and check this. Then click “OK.”

2.2. Give “TOC 1” a dotted line leader.

Then you should be back to the “Modify Style” dialog box. Here, go to “Format” again, and this time, choose “Tabs….”

Assuming you’re using the 1-inch left and right margins that the Student Supplement specifies on 8.5-inch wide paper, enter “6.5” in the “Tab stop position” box.¹

Then, under “Alignment,” choose “Right.” And under “Leader,” choose the second option for a dotted leader (……). Then click “OK.”

You’ll then see the “Modify Style” dialog box again.

If you need an extra blank line between each heading in your table of contents, edit this now by going to “Format.” Then choose “Paragraph…,” and change the spacing after the paragraph to 12 points. Then click “OK.” You’ll need to repeat this process on the style for each heading level in your table of contents (i.e., “TOC 2” through “TOC 9”).

Decide whether you want to use this modified TOC 1 style in other documents in the future.

If so, choose “New documents based on this template” at the very bottom of the dialog box.

If not, simply leave the default option “Only in this document” selected.

Then click “OK.”

3. Refresh your table of contents.

The font for the primary headings in the table of contents may change immediately. But to see the dotted line leaders, you’ll need to refresh the whole table.

To do so, right click inside the table, and choose “Update Field.” Then, choose the “Update entire table” option, and click “OK.”

Conclusion

Voila! You should now have a table of contents in your document that

1. Follows the formatting required by the Student Supplement,
2. Updates as you update your document, and
3. Doesn’t need to take any more of your time with adjustments as you finalize your document.

Congratulations, and I hope you enjoy the time and attention you get to invest elsewhere now that you don’t have to manage your table of contents any more.

Header image provided by Kaitlyn Baker

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1. 8.5 inches, less one inch for each margin (left and right) means that the inner edge of the right-hand margin is 6.5 inches from the inner edge of the left-hand margin. ↩

You can pretty easily get Word to generate a table of contents that automatically updates with your document.¹

But if you need to follow some special formatting for the table, like in the Student Supplement for The SBL Handbook of Style, it’s less clear how to do that.

If you simply format the table directly, your formatting will get lost the next time the table updates.

The key to make the formatting “stick” is modifying the styles that drive the table of contents.

1. Take stock of how your table looks now.

If you followed along with my process for inserting a table of contents, you may initially see something like this:

The casing for each line of the table of contents will be as it is in that heading.

You won’t have any line leaders, and your page numbers will be listed straight down the right margin.

2. Take stock of how your table should look.

If this is how you’re table of contents looks, you’re in the ballpark. But you still need a few minor changes to get what the Student Supplement asks for (§3.2).

That is, in the table of contents, when you have

• Primary headings, you need the headings in all caps and a dotted line leader between the heading and the page number.
• First-level subheadings, you need the headings indented three spaces from the left-hand margin.
• Second-level subheadings, you need the heading indented three more spaces (six total) from the left-hand margin and so on with subsequent levels of subheadings.²

3. Identify what formatting you need to adjust.

From our example table of contents above, you’ll just need to change the primary headings’ casing and line leader format.

Depending on how you have the rest of your document formatted, you may also need to change the line spacing in your table of contents so that it’s double spaced as the Student Supplement requires.

But the Student Supplement’s “three spaces” of indentation is essentially equivalent to the 0.15 inches.

This distance is the indentation that Word applies to these subheadings by default. So you shouldn’t need to adjust this indentation at all.

Conclusion

If you try to apply formatting directly to any of these portions of your table of contents, your formatting will be lost when your full table is refreshed.

Fortunately, each level in your table of contents has a specific style associated with it that controls how that level in your table appears.

So all you need to do to change the formatting of a given heading level in your table of contents is to edit the corresponding style.

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1. Header image provided by Kaitlyn Baker. ↩

2. To me, it seems that this practice is most in keeping with the Student Supplement’s intent. Otherwise, it won’t be clear in the table of contents where second-level subheadings come underneath first-level subheadings in the paper. The headings in the table of contents will both be indented by the same amount. But this is what the example in the Student Supplement §3.2 shows. The Student Supplement doesn’t give further information about indenting third- through fifth-level subheadings in a table of contents. Presumably, therefore, these would be indented underneath second- through fourth-level subheadings. Consequently, I am interpreting the example in the Student Supplement §3.2 as slightly awry and the intention as being to have second-level subheadings indented three spaces more than first-level subheadings. I’ve written SBL Press to confirm this interpretation but have yet to hear back as of this writing. ↩