Guides & Tutorials: Reference Management Tools for Academic Writing: Other Functions

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How to use EndNote in 7 minutes

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How to...

Sometimes the styles EndNote provides may not exactly meet your needs. You may need to modify the style to fit into the requirement. EndNote is well known for its highly customizable citation styles. To edit or customize a citation style, you can refer to the tips below.

Select the style you would like to edit, e.g. APA 6th.

Click on Tools.
Select Output Styles.
Click on Edit "(the style name)" to open the style manager.

Identify the area(s) you would like to edit from the sidebar. Below are some examples.

Journal Names: controls journal name format, e.g. using full or abbreviated journal name.
Sections: controls where to add a bibliography in your Word document, e.g. at the end of the entire document or a separate bibliography at the end of each section.
Citations: controls the format and overall settings of the in-text citations.
Author Lists under Citations: controls the format and number of authors displaying in in-text citations.
Bibliography: controls the format and overall settings of the reference list.
Title Capitalization under Bibliography: controls if the title in reference list displays as headline style, sentence style or leave it as entered.

Edit the style according to your needs, e.g. to remove DOI for journal articles. In this case, you will need to edit the Templates under Bibliography.

The field names (e.g. Author, Year, Title) defined in EndNote indicate what information is included in your formatted reference.

Click on Insert Field to see full list of field names defined in EndNote.

Singular/Plural Term Separator (caret symbol ^) is used between the singular and plural versions of terms.

In the case below, Ed. will be shown if there is only one editor, and Eds. will be shown if there are multiple editors.

Link Adjacent Text (degree symbol ° ) is used to link text to a field so that the text does not appear if the field is empty. It's similar to a non-breaking space in Word document.

In the case below, ed. will be shown only when the Edition information in the reference record is not empty.

Forced separation (vertical bar |) is used to separate punctuation from adjacent fields.

In the case below, all the Edition, ed., Vol. and Volume will show together or disappear together if there is no forced separation (vertical bar |) between them.

Field names as plain text (a pair of back quote symbol ` `) tells EndNote to treat the quoted word(s) as plain text instead of field name.

In the case below, both the word "doi:" and DOI field will be shown if "doi:" is put within a pair of back quotes.

To save an edited citation style, follow Steps 5 - 10 in Get More Citation Styles.

You may seek our help via the Research Consultation Appointment Form if you wish us to work with you in editing the citation style.

Except where otherwise noted, the content of this guide is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License. Notify us if there are copyright concerns.

To save the style into your EndNote library, click on File.
Then select Save as...

To save the style into your EndNote library, click on File.
Then select Save as...

Select the references you would like to include in the list of references.
Right-click on the selected references, then choose Copy Formatted.

Click on Edit.
Select Preferences...