Creating an Author Date Style

A new style need only contain a Citation template and a Generic Bibliography template for it to produce citations and bibliographies for any paper. The Citation template applies to all in-text citations, and the Generic bibliography template applies to all reference types that do not have templates of their own in the style. The Generic template should be considered a default template, and you should add additional templates for the standard reference types which you use. If you define a specific template for any reference types, they are formatted according to that template, and not the Generic format.

Note: For the example text in templates shown below, a small dot (·) is used to indicate a standard space. This is just to clarify spacing in the style. The dots will only show in the style when working in the templates; they do not show in other style panels.

Create a New Style
  1. To create a bibliographic style, go to the Tools menu, select Output Style, and then select New Style, and a new Untitled Style window appears.
Create the (Author, Year) Citation Template
  1. Select the Templates panel under the Citations heading.
  2. Place the cursor in the text box under the Citation heading in the Citations Templates panel.
  3. Type an open parenthesis.
  4. Click the Insert Field button and select Author from the list of available fields.
  5. Type a comma and a space.
  6. Select Year from the Insert Field list.
  7. Type the closing parenthesis.
Create the Author (Year) Citation Template
  1. Select the Templates panel under the Citations heading.
  2. Place the cursor in the text box under the Citation — Author (Year) heading in the Citations Templates panel.
  3. Click the Insert Field button and select Author from the list of available fields, then type a space.
  4. Type an open parenthesis.
  5. Select Year from the Insert Field list.
  6. Type the closing parenthesis.
Set the Number of Authors in the Citation
  1. Select Author Lists under the Citations heading.
  2. The default setting for Abbreviated Author List — First Appearance is to list all author names in the citation. For this example, let's change this setting to show up to three author names the first time a reference is cited, and two authors and "et al." in italics if there are more than three authors.
    1. Click the radio button under Abbreviated Author List — First Appearance that starts with If 3 or more authors... (3 is only the default).
    2. Change the 3 to a 4 where it says If 3 or more authors, then change 1 to 2 where it says list the first 1 author(s), then mark the Italic checkbox.  It should now show something like this:

           If 4 or more authors, list the first 2 author(s) and abbreviate with , et al. Image of Italics marking checkbox Italic

      With this setting, if there are up to three authors, all authors will appear in the citation. If there are more than three authors (4 or more authors), only two authors will appear, followed by ", et al."
  3. The default setting for Abbreviated Author List — Subsequent Appearances is also to list all authors. Let's change this to show only the first author and when repeated citations have more three authors.
    1. Click the radio button under Abbreviated Author List — Subsequent Appearances for the option that begins with If 3 or more authors…
    2. Change the 3 to 4 where it says If 3 or more authors, then leave the option set to 1 where it says list the first 1 author(s), and finally, mark the Italic box. (If you wanted it to show something other than ", et al." you could change the text.) It should now show something like this:

           If 4 or more authors, list the first 1 author(s) and abbreviate with , et al. Image of Italics marking checkbox Italic

      With this setting, if there are up to three authors, all authors will appear in the repeated citation. If there are more than three authors (4 or more authors), only the first author will appear, followed by ", et al."
Set the Author Names to Show Only the Last Name in the Citation
  1. Select Author Name under the Citations heading.
  2. For the citations, we want only the author's last names to show, with no special capitalization options, so we will leave most of these settings as shown in the defaults. However, we would like the author name to be shown only once if an author has two references in the same grouped citation. For example, instead of (Smith, 2012; Smith, 2020), we want it to show (Smith, 2012, 2020). Set this by marking the checkbox Omit repeated authors under Consecutive Citation by the Same Author. To use a comma instead of a semicolon between the years, mark the box Separate these citations with and leave the default option to use a comma and a space as it is.
Create a Generic Bibliography Template

Next, define the Generic format which serves as the default template for reference types that do not have their own template.

Our style uses the author name and the year in the citation. They are surrounded by parentheses and separated by a comma. Most styles that show the author and year in citations also begin with those fields and sort the bibliography by the author name, then by the year, then by the title, so we will create bibliography settings to do so.

  1. Select Templates under the Bibliography heading, then click on Generic. Your cursor should now be located in the Generic text box, where you can enter the fields and punctuation for your style.
  2. Select Author from the Insert Field list to add the Author field to the style template. (You can also type "Author" but it is safer to select the field name from the list, to avoid typos.) Type a period and a space. Continue adding fields and punctuation until you have a line that looks like the one below.

Author.·(Year).·Title.·Place·Published,·Publisher.

  1. In this style, the title must be italicized, so double-click the word Title to select it and apply italic formatting. Choose the formatting option from the toolbar in the Style window, or select the option from the Font submenu in the style's Edit menu. See Fonts and Text in Output Styles or more information on working with fonts in EndNote. You can also use the following shortcuts to apply text formatting.
    1. Ctrl+B for bold
    2. Ctrl+I for italic
    3. Ctrl+U for underline
    4. Ctrl+Shift++ (the last + is the plus sign, so this means to hold down the Ctrl key, the Shift key, and the + key together) for superscript
    5. Ctrl+Shift+‒ (the ‒ is the minus sign, so this means to hold down the Ctrl key, the Shift key, and the ‒ key together) for subscript
  2. Save the new style by selecting Save As from the style's File menu. In the dialog that appears, type "Practice Style" as the name of this style and click Save. This will save the style and add it as an option in the Output Styles submenu of the Tools menu.
Test the Style

Open your library,select a reference, and expand the Preview subpanel on the Reference > Summary panel. Select different references in your library to see how they format. You will probably see that the books look good, but journal articles do not display enough information. You will need to return to the style and create a template to format journal articles.

Create a New Template for Journals

In the Templates panel under the Bibliography heading, select Journal Article from the Reference Type drop-down list. This will create a new section for a Journal Article template. Insert the fields and punctuation to create a template as shown below:

Author·(Year). Title. Journal. Volume (Issue) Pages.

Save the style by selecting Save from the style's File menu. Return to the Library window, and check the preview to see how journal article references are formatted.

Setting a Sort Order

Our practice style's bibliography and citations need to be sorted by Authors, Year, and then by the Title. To do this:

  1. Select Sort Order under the Bibliography heading to set the sorting options for the bibliography.
  2. Select the third option, Author + Year + Title.
  3. Select Sort Order under the Citations heading to set the sorting option for the Citations.
  4. Select the first option, Same as bibliography. This will sort citations within a grouped citation in the same order they would be sorted in the bibliography.

To explore more options for sorting citations in a style, see Sort Order: Bibliographies and Multiple Citations.

Finishing the Style

Continue testing how other reference types format, and include additional reference type templates as necessary. See Modifying Style Templates for specifics about creating and modifying style templates. See Special Formatting Characters for information on how to use special characters to provide more control over formatting in templates.

Look at how the author names are formatted, and change the necessary settings. You should also take a close look at pages, title capitalization, the sort order of the references, and various other options provided in the Style window. These are described in the section on Additional Style Formatting Options.

Additional Style Formatting Options