Sort Order: Bibliographies and Multiple Citations

Each style has instructions for sorting references in the bibliography, and how to sort formatted multiple citations in the text of your paper. Select Sort Order from under either the Citations or Bibliography headings.

Multiple Citation Sort

The Sort panel under the Citation heading allows you to set the order that the style uses to sort multiple in-text citations. For example, an unformatted multiple citation looks like this:

{Lee, 2015 #5; Jacob, 2020 #22; Zoler, 2011 #19}

Formatted with the Author-Date style, the citations are sorted chronologically and the formatted citation looks like this:

(Zoler 2011; Lee 2015; Jacob 2020)

Options for sorting multiple citations include:

Same as Bibliography: Sorts multiple citations in the same order as the Bibliography Sort Order.
Author + Title: Sorts multiple citations first by authors and then by title.
Author + Year + Title: Sorts multiple citations first by authors, then by year, and then by title.
Year + Author: Sorts multiple citations chronologically. Then citations from the same year are sorted based on author names.
Don’t Sort: Multiple citations remain in the same order as they appear in the unformatted temporary citations.
Other: A custom sort order is applied to multiple citations. See Custom Sorting.

Bibliography Sort Order

The Bibliography Sort Order section determines how the bibliography should be sorted. Common options are listed, and you may also configure a custom sort order.

Order of Appearance: References are listed in the order in which they are cited in the paper.
Author + Title: References are sorted by the Author field. References with identical authors are sorted by title.
Author + Year + Title: References are sorted by the Author field, then references with identical authors are sorted by year. References with identical authors and years are then sorted by title.
First Author + Year + Other Authors: References are sorted by just the first author, then references with identical primary authors are sorted by year. References with identical primary authors and years are then sorted based on the other authors in the reference.
First Author + # of Authors + Year: References are sorted by just the first author, then by the number of authors in the reference. For references with the same primary author and the same number of authors, they are then sorted chronologically based on the Year field.
Other: A custom sort order is applied to the references in the bibliography. See Custom Sorting.
Sort Edited Works After Original Works By Same Author: Some styles request that if the same person is the author for a book and the editor for an edited book, the original works by that author are sorted first, and then the edited works follow. This is an exception to the sorting rules that can be applied to the other sort options provided.

Note: When sorting by Author field, EndNote sorts based on all information in the Author field, including all author names (not just the first author) and initials. To see about omitting parts of author names or the initial words of a title when sorting, see Sorting Preferences.

Custom Sorting

To sort references or multiple citations differently from the options in the Citation Sort Order or Bibliography Sort Order sections, select the option for Other, and then select from the drop-down field lists any combination of up to five fields, in ascending or descending order.

This dialog is identical to the one that appears when you select Sort Library from the Library menu. You do not need to use all five options. The button at the right of each box controls the direction of the sort, either ascending or descending order. Clicking these buttons toggles the sort order between ascending and descending order.

At the bottom of the dialog is a drop-down menu of languages. The default will be the language used by your operating system, but you can change the language rules used for sorting here.

Once you have set up your sorting strategy, click OK to return to the main Sort Order panel for the style. The Other section will now display your custom sorting instructions.