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Unit 2.1: Adding and editing references manually: basic steps

Open a new reference window

• From the REFERENCES menu, select NEW REFERENCE.

Choose a Reference type

Each reference type (journal article, book, etc) has a template with its own set of fields (author, title, publisher etc). Click the Reference Type drop box to choose the reference type you need.

• Use Book for books written by one or more authors.
• Use Edited Book for books edited by one or more editors.
• Use Book Section for parts of edited or non-edited books - for example a chapter or an article in published conference proceedings.
• Use Journal article for electronic or print journal articles.
• Use Conference Proceedings for a whole conference proceedings not a single conference article.
• Use Electronic Source for a Web page that isn't a book of journal article.
• Use Personal Communication for all correspondence including email.

Enter data

Data are entered into separate fields in an EndNote reference. The general principle is to enter plain text with as little punctuation and as few special styles as possible. Later when you format a paper in a citation style of your choice (see Unit 4), EndNote will determine where italics, brackets, quotes, full stops appear in your cited references.

However, you must be aware of a few important rules and exceptions shown in the example and notes below. Failing to follow these will cause you time-consuming problems later with your bibliography.

As an example, the journal article:

Auld, Tony D., and A. J. Denham, 2001, Predispersal seed predation in shrubs of Grevillea (Proteaceae) from south-eastern Australia: Aust j bot, v. 49 issue 1, p. 17-21.

would be entered into EndNote as:

Other rules and exceptions

• Multiple last names: Van Tets, Gerald Frederick
• Titles such as Jr: Smith, Alfred, Jr
• Enter all authors when there are several. Enter et al., (note the comma) only as a last resort if you don't know the names of later authors.
• Leave the author field blank for anonymous works (but use Anonymous if "Anonymous" is printed on the title page)
• Institutions as authors - University of Adelaide, (i.e. add a comma)
• Institutions with a division - University of Adelaide,, School of Chemistry and Physics (i.e. add a double comma)
• If possible, enter full author names rather than initials.

• If appropriate, enter in press or in preparation or similar.

• Use plain text without using italics or bold formatting or capitals, except when you know capitals or italics appear regardless of the citation style. Examples of such exceptions:
  Capitalise proper names like Australia.
  Capitalise the first letter of each key word in a journal title (Australian Journal of Botany) because most styles do.
  Use italics for a species name - Drosophila melanogaster.
  Use superscripts or subscripts if necessary - H₂O - by selecting the text and choosing EDIT > STYLE > SUBSCRIPT.
• If possible, enter full journal titles. Abbreviated journal titles are better entered in the Alternate journal field. See Unit 4.4 for more on the handling of abbreviations through the Journals term list.
• Enter volume and issue numbers without v., vol., :, ( ) and so on

• Do not add punctuation such as a full stop at the end of city or publisher.
• Otherwise enter publisher data as you want to see it in your bibliography. Capitalize publisher or place names.
• For pages enter 1098 not 1,098.
• For edition do not add ed. - enter2nd not 2nd ed.
• Page ranges can be full 1442-1449 or abbreviated 1442-9.

• Data can be entered here much as you like, since they do not appear in your bibliography.
• By default use semi-colon(;), backslash (\), or ENTER as the delimiter that separates individual keywords. [The default can be changed using the Define Term Lists command in the TOOLS menu.]
• The Abstract and Notes fields can hold up to 16 pages of text.
• If your work covers more than one topic, consider adding a topic category to the Label field so that you can search for a subset of that topic's references if you need to.

• Enter a URL for a web document you will want to link to later.
• To link to a document on your own computer, see Unit 2.2.

• EndNote supports special characters - diacritical, Greek, mathematical and typographical symbols - in a reference. You can type the character from the keyboard, copy it from Microsoft Word or copy it from the Windows Character Map program or the Macintosh Key Caps program. Use the Courier New or MS Sans Serif or Arial Unicode MS fonts. Some other fonts will revert to the Plain Text Font when pasted in EndNote.
• When you add data, the author name, keywords and journal name show in red if they are new terms not already in the EndNote library's term lists - see Unit 4.4. If you begin to enter a name, journal or keyword that you have used before, EndNote will complete the term for you to speed up data entry. Press ENTER to accept EndNote's suggestion or continue typing to reject it.

• You can spell check a single reference, apart from the author and URL fields. Choose SPELL CHECK from the TOOLS menu.

Edit, copy and paste

You can use standard cut/copy and paste commands from the EDIT menu (or their keyboard equivalents) to copy text from one field and paste it into another field in the same record or in a different record.

You can copy and paste text from elsewhere (e.g. a Word document) into an EndNote reference.

Close and save a reference

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