Reference Format in Word Windows 11

Question

I recently bought a new desktop running Windows 11 Pro. I write a lot of papers for conferences and journals so I use the Reference tool all the time (love that option btw, saves me so much effort). When I create a new reference the number that gets inserted is in italics. E.g., "The theory of Foo was created by Aaron Bar [1]" Everything else works the same as on my old machine. I think what it probably is, is that I set some parameter on my old machine a long time ago and I can't remember where to find that. Most of the places I submit papers to want the refs to just be in regular style, i.e., "The theory of Foo was created by Aaron Bar [1]"

It's not a big deal because I can easily change the style back to regular but there is probably some simple option that I'm just missing. I looked both in Options and in the various style options for the ref tool. I see all sorts of options to change things like the numbering, the ref format (IEEE, APA, etc.) BTW, I doubt it matters but I use IEEE format. But I couldn't find anything about the style (in the sense of italic or regular font) of the numbers in the text. Thanks in advance for any help.

Answer 1

Check the settings for the paragraph styles in the affected document. In particular, see if the Normal style somehow has incorporated italic.

It is possible for the Normal style to include italic while that attribute is suppressed in the document because the person who designed the document template has turned off the italic for selected text.

In the Styles pane (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S), rest the mouse pointer on the Normal style, click the little arrow and choose Modify from the drop down menu. Verify the style settings.

Repeat these steps with other styles if necessary.

Answer 2

Dear Voby's,

Greetings! Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community.

Per your description, when you create a new reference with IEEE format in Word, the number that gets inserted is in italics.

I'd like to help you, please let us cooperate, we can work together to narrow down and resolve the situation.

I tried testing in Word from my side and didn't reproduce the same issue. I created a new reference by using IEEE style, the number is in regular style.

May I know if this issue occurs in a specific document or different documents?

If different documents all have this problem, you may try to open Word in safe mode, then open your document and create a reference. If issue doesn't happen, then it could be caused by Word dd-ins.

To open Word in safe mode, you may check this article Open Office apps in safe mode on a Windows PC - Microsoft Support

If issue persists in safe mode, could you share your Word application version? I'd like to test in same version as yours and check the outcome.

In Word, please click File>Account, on the right side, capture a full screenshot of Product Information and share it here.

Look forward to your reply. Thanks for your time and cooperation!

Hope you have a nice day.

Sincerely,

Tina | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 3

Thanks for the follow-up.

If you want to, you can share a sample document with the forum, and I'll have a closer look. The sample should of course be a simplified version which does not include any sensitive content.

As far as responding to messages in the forum is concerned, note that any reply that you mark as the Answer will be duplicated: the Answer appears in its original location in the thread and at the top (immediately below the question). You should be able to reply to either the original Answer or its duplicate (but not both).

Answer 4

I see what is going on now. I have to use a specific template for a conference for the paper. I just now created a new empty word document and inserted a reference from my library in IEEE style and it inserted it in normal font. So this is just something weird about the template and how it works with the latest version of Word in Windows 11. It's odd because it doesn't do this in Windows 10 and the actual style guide they give you says to not have refs in italics. Anyway, it is just something odd about the conference template for the papers so I can just continue to fix it manually and now I know it's not something that I need to worry about fixing because for other documents it works as I expect. Thanks.

Answer 5

@Stefan Bloom, I think because I marked your reply as solving the problem I can't reply to your reply directly. Either that or I'm just doing something wrong. Anyway, thanks for that info. I will check that out but I probably won't change anything. The way the conferences work is they give you a template and you aren't supposed to deviate from it. The italics thing is some glitch but I don't want to mess with the built in styles because I'm afraid I might mess something else up. And it is trivially easy to just fix it manually. I'm just leaving all the new or changed refs in italics then when I'm done I'm going to do one more refresh of the reference generated at the end and the fields that have the numbers and then manually change the italics to normal. Since it is just weirdness with this one paper it's not a big deal and the manual change is fine. But I really appreciate the feedback. I actually program in Python and Java and using various AI tools, but when it comes to the details of Word and Powerpoint I'm kind of clueless!

Michael