Special Formatting Characters

EndNote has special formatting characters that add flexibility and precision to the grouping of punctuation and fields in the style templates.

Note: Special characters appear in this color font here to make them more visible, but in the standard black font in EndNote. Regular spaces are indicated by the dot (·) character.

Link Adjacent Text (Using the Nonbreaking Space)

If you type "Edition ed." into a style template and use an ordinary space to separate the field name "Edition" from the abbreviation "ed.", then "ed." will appear regardless of whether or not the reference has an edition (see Rule #4: Independent Text Always Appears in the Bibliography).

To avoid this problem, make "ed." dependent on the Edition field by linking "ed." to the Edition field with a nonbreaking space. Think of a nonbreaking space as bibliographic formatting glue. It joins two or more items together so they act as a single unit. Thus, any text or punctuation "glued" to a field will drop out of the bibliography if that field is empty.

You can insert a nonbreaking space by selecting Link Adjacent Text from the Insert Field list in the Templates panels. You can also enter it by typing Ctrl+Alt+Space. It appears on the screen as a degree (°) character.

The nonbreaking space is converted to a normal space in the formatting process. Common uses of the nonbreaking space include (where "°" is used as a nonbreaking space):

p^pp°Pages

Edition°ed.

vol°Volume

Editor°Ed.^Eds.

The nonbreaking space is also used in conjunction with the vertical bar (see below) to change the dependency of a punctuation mark from one field to another.

Volume|:°Issue|.

In this case, the colon (:) is linked to the Issue field with a nonbreaking space, so it does not print in the bibliography if the Issue field is empty.

Forced Separation—Using the Vertical Bar

If you do not want text or punctuation to be dependent on the preceding or adjacent field, use the vertical bar character (|), to force a separation of the text from a field. The vertical bar can be found on the same key as the backslash (\). It can also be inserted from the Insert Field list in the Templates panels.

Think of a vertical bar as breaking dependence, or forcing separation between two dependent items. (The vertical bar works in exactly the opposite way as the nonbreaking space.)

For example, the Journal Article templates in some styles require a period between the volume and issue. A template for such a style might look like this (where "·" indicates a space):

Journal Article
Author.·"Title."·Journal·Volume.Issue·(Year):·Pages.

However, when this style formats a journal article that does not include an issue number, the bibliography entry will be incorrect, as in the following example:

Clark, H. and Carlson, T. "Hearers and Speech Acts." Language 58.(1982): 332-373.

Notice that the period used to separate the volume from the issue appears here in the absence of an issue because it is dependent upon the Volume (Rule #2). And the space separating the volume and the year is lost because that space is dependent upon the Issue field (Rule #3).

EndNote has a way of avoiding these problems. The vertical bar character (|) can be used to break the automatic grouping of spaces and punctuation with adjacent fields.

If you insert the vertical bar before the period in our example, the period’s dependency switches from the Volume field to the Issue field. Add another vertical bar before the space that follows the Issue field, and the space will no longer be dependent on the Issue field. Use the vertical bar character in conjunction with the nonbreaking space. With these changes the style looks like this:

Journal Article
Author.·"Title."·Journal·Volume|.Issue|·(Year)|:°Pages|.

And the formatted reference without an issue is correct:

Clark, H. and Carlson, T. "Hearers and Speech Acts." Language 58 (1982): 332-373.

Other common examples for using the vertical bar include:

Publisher|:°City

Pages|. (to make the final period independent of the field before it)

Field Names in Bibliographies

Sometimes you may need to use text in a template that is also an EndNote field name for that reference type. For example, you may want to use the word "Editor" after the editor’s name:

Jones, V.R., B.K. Marion, and R.L. Zeiss, The Theory of Foraging, in A History of Foraging Behavior, B.J. Bloggs, Editor. 1976, Smith and Barnes: New York.

Normally, EndNote interprets the word "Editor" as a field name when it appears in a book’s style template. This is true even of field names that appear as part of a word, such as "Editors" or "Issued." Field names need not be capitalized to be recognized.

To force EndNote to interpret a word as just text and not as a field name in a template, put an accent grave character (`) before and after the word: `Editor`. The accent grave is found in the upper left corner of most keyboards, on the same key as the tilde (~). Remember to also use the nonbreaking space to link the text, `Editor`, to the Editor field.

Singular/Plural Term Separator (Caret ^)

You can specify both singular and plural forms of labels for editors or pages in a formatted reference by using a caret (^) to separate the terms. For example, some styles put "Ed." after a single editor and "Eds." after several editors’ names. Or, similarly, "p." might precede a single page, while "pp." precedes multiple pages. This feature can be applied to any field that corresponds to the Generic field for Author, Secondary Author, Tertiary Author, Subsidiary Author, Translated Author, Pages, or Cited Pages.

In the style template, enter both the singular and plural forms of the label separated by a caret (insert it from the Insert Field list or type Shift+6). Any text before the caret, back to but not including the preceding space, is used for the singular form; text after the caret, up to the next space, is used for the plural form. These terms must also be linked to the relevant field using a nonbreaking space. For example, a style template might look like this:

Or like this:

Journal Article
Author.·"Title,"·Journal,·Volume|.°Issue|·(Year)|:p.^pp.°Pages|.

Note: Spaces in EndNote style templates appear as small dots (·), as they do here. They are not special characters, they are shown this way here and in EndNote to make it easy to identify spaces in the style. Spaces show as dots in EndNote only when working in the style templates, not in other parts of the style.