Tips on Citing Sources

Temporary vs. Formatted Citations

A "citation" is the bibliographic information in the body of a paper that refers the reader to a complete reference in the bibliography. Normally a citation consists of a bibliography number or the author and year in parentheses:

... of the species at hand.1

... of the species at hand.(Argus, 1991)

When you first copy an EndNote citation and paste it into your paper, it appears in EndNote’s temporary citation format. This format consists of the first author’s last name, year, and the EndNote record number, with citation delimiters at each end.

{Author, Year #Record Number}

When EndNote formats this paper it replaces the temporary citations with formatted citations.

Temporary Citation:  {Argus, 1991 #11}

Formatted Citation (in APA): (Argus & Matthews, 1991)

EndNote relies on the temporary citations to determine which references to include in the bibliography. During formatting, EndNote scans your word-processing document for temporary citations, finds their matching references in the EndNote library, and creates a duplicate of your document complete with formatted in-text citations and a bibliography at the end. This new document is called your "formatted" paper.

Note: By default, citation delimiters are curly braces. If you have other text within curly braces, you may want to change your citation delimiters.

Multiple References in One Citation

If you need multiple references in one in-text citation, you can accomplish this in one of two ways. One option is to insert all of the citations together:

To insert multiple citations:

  1. In EndNote, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on the desired references in your library (or hold down the Shift key to select a continuous range of references).
  2. From the Edit menu, select Copy (Ctrl+C).
  3. Position the cursor in your word processing document where you want the citations, and select Paste (Ctrl+V) from the Edit menu.

The citations are inserted together in one set of delimiters. Once formatted, they appear in one multiple citation, sorted as your bibliographic style requires:

Unformatted: {Hall, 2020 #90; Baker, 2015 #38}

Formatted: (Baker, 2015; Hall, 2020)

The other option is to add the citations to the paper individually. EndNote merges adjacent citations automatically during the formatting process. Citations do not merge, however, if any character, including spaces or punctuation, separates them.

Unformatted: {Hall, 2020 #90}{Baker, 2015 #38}

Merged when Formatted: (Baker, 2015; Hall, 2020)

Note: If one of the citations in a multiple citation cannot be matched during formatting, the entire citation will remain unformatted.

Citing References in Footnotes or Endnotes with Format Paper

Once you have created a footnote or an endnote in your word-processing document, you can cite references in the footnotes or endnotes just like you cite them in the body of the text.

To cite references in footnotes:

  1. In your EndNote library, select the reference(s) that you would like to cite and select Copy (Ctrl+C) from the Edit menu.
  2. Create the footnote or endnote using the appropriate command in your word processor. EndNote does not actually create the footnote or endnote in the document, but it is used to insert and format the citations in the notes.
  3. Position the cursor in the footnote or endnote in your paper where you would like the citation(s) to appear and select Paste (Ctrl+V) from the Edit menu.

Note: You can edit a full reference footnote citation to exclude author name, year, or author/year. Note that the Author(Year) option does not apply to footnotes. See Components of a Temporary Citation and Examples of Modified Citations for information on customizing temporary citations.

The EndNote style that is selected in the Citations dialog determines how the citations in the footnotes or endnotes will be formatted. EndNote can format these citations as brief in-text citations or like the complete references in the bibliography. It can also create a special format specific to footnotes or endnotes, including options like "Ibid." and other variations of shortened references when a citation appears more than once in the footnotes or endnotes.

Typing Citations into Your Paper in Rich Text Format (RTF) Files

Manually entering citations is the same whether you are using Format Paper with an RTF file or Cite While You Write with Microsoft Word. See these topics:

Related Topics

Basic Instructions for Using Format Paper