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Help! I’m Stuck on Citations

Citations can be the bane of a copyeditor’s existence. Whether one author writes them or multiple authors do, copyeditors are often left to fill in blanks and apply a style where none exists.

Theoretically, writers are responsible for writing complete, properly formatted citations. Editors should only have to do a light edit, querying any missing information. Among other items, your citation checklist should include the following: 

  • The desired citation style was used.
  • Citations in the text are listed in the references.
  • Names are correctly spelled.
  • Publication titles are correct.

However, I’ve yet to hear that this happens with anything like regularity. It’s more typical for editors to have to do a lot of cleanup and a lot of research to find missing information. As a result, editing citations can take as long, if not longer, than editing the rest of the text.

There are a few ways to make the work easier.

Choose a Style to Follow

Someone needs to choose a style so the citations will be consistent. This is especially important in multi-author works. Ideally, the publisher will make that decision. But if it doesn’t, the editor can decide. I’ve made the decision many times for my business clients. If you make the decision, lean toward what’s easiest to apply or most appropriate for the topic and readers.

Put Your Software to Work

Citations are all about formatting precision, which software is very good at. Anything you can automate in the process will speed your editing pace. 

If you’re able to coach your writers into using Word’s tools, you might have an easier time editing citations:

  • Word’s Footnotes function will insert a footnote or endnote number at the cursor’s position and at the bottom of the page or end of the document. Note that it doesn’t always play nice with the Track Changes function, but once the changes are accepted or rejected, the problems generally fix themselves.
  • Word’s Citations & Bibliography function will help you create a citation and then a bibliography. 

Macros can help by fixing formatting on many citations at once, saving you a lot of time. The Editorium’s NoteStripper will strip out, change, or add formatting and can be purchased on its own or as part of a package of macros. You can also check out Paul Beverley’s CitationAlyse to check citations against references.

Reference managers can help format citations according to a select style. Check out Edifix, EndNote, and Zotero

It’s early days yet, but generative AI has the potential to help with citations. Perplexity.ai is a good choice for finding missing information because it lists its sources and you can quickly check the information. I’ve used Claude to help with formatting citations and bibliographies, but you can also check out one of the many new tools out there. 

Whenever we hand a task over to technology, whether it’s a simple macro or an advanced AI tool, we need to check the results. All technology is prone to error. The Purdue Online Writing Lab has an excellent article on how to use reference managers responsibly. You’ll want to be extra cautious with AI—and don’t use AI if your client or employer prohibits it.

Hire Someone to Handle Citations

Want to keep humans involved in citation work? Hire another editor to work on citations while you work on the main copy. It can make the difference in hitting deadlines and you’ll be supporting another editor. Students or new editors can be good choices, because they’re recently trained in the latest tools and styles, and working for you can give them some much-needed editing experience.

A version of this article originally published on January 6, 2017, on Copyediting blog.

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