EndNote Basic

Why do people make such a fuss about citation styles?

A citation style organizes the pieces of a citation into an easily recognizable form. When you know what to look for, it's easy to tell a journal article from a book chapter from a conference paper. A citation style also makes sure that you've included all the important information about a source, so that your reader can tell the difference between, for instance, two papers by the same author in the same year, or two books by the same title.

Warning: Always double check automated formatting against the rules and examples provided in style manuals and guides. Be especially careful of capitalization, proper names, and dates.

EndNote Basic has hundreds of formatting options; so many that it's confusing.

The major formatting styles used are MLA (English and other Humanities), APA (most Social Sciences, including Education and Nursing), Chicago (History), ACS (American Chemical Society) and CSE--formerly CBE-- (Biosciences). These are all in the (long) alphabetical list available in EndNote Web, plus dozens of other styles from journals, publishers, and associations in all fields of study.

In EndNote Basic, there are three methods of formatting citations.

1. Format an entire folder in a particular style. Choose Format, then Bibliography.
2. Use the "Cite While You Write" MS Word plugin to format in text citations and a bibliography within Word. See the Endnote Basic Help section for instructions on downloading and using the plugin.
3. If you do not have MS Word or cannot download the plugin, it is possible to have EndNote Basic format the paper for you. Please see the Help section on formatting for instructions. You must prepare your paper carefully according to the instructions for the automatic formatting to work.

To choose a formatting style in any of these cases, you will need to select your preferred style from the very long list. If there are a few format styles that you use often, you can Customize your style list to see only those commonly used styles. On any page showing the Bibliographic Styles drop down list, click on the Customize this list link to the right of the drop down box.