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UMGC Effective Writing Center Writing Your Table of Contents

The table of contents for a formal report is placed after the executive summary and directly before the body of the report, which begins with the introduction.

The table of contents includes everything in the report package except the transmittal letter. The table of contents does not list itself. The table of contents also includes the location of major headings, subheadings and any appendices.

One of the keys to an effective TOC is the use of leaders (. . . . . . . . ) that connect the content to the page that content begins on. The video below illustrates one simply method to ensure that the row of page numbers of the right side of the TOC are aligned vertically.

Image Still for Video: Word Table of Contents: How to Manually Align Page Numbers

Word Table of Contents: How to Manually Align Page Numbers

For some, Word's tool for generating a table of contents page can be confusing or too much trouble for shorter papers. Here is a simple trick for aligning page numbers in a vertical line for a table of contents created in Microsoft Word.

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