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Fiction and non-fiction writers do a lot of research in the process of writing their stories, documents, or books. This article will show you how to track references and citations in MS Word.
Fiction writers wouldn’t normally cite sources except in the front or back matter where the author thanks a person or entity for their assistance. For fiction writers, there are more appropriate options available for handling research and sources than Microsoft Word. Scrivener is the best I know of for organizing research for fiction writers.
For non-fiction writers, it’s commonly necessary to track your references and to cite them properly. Later in this article, we’ll take a look at citations and bibliographies.
First, we’ll look at footnotes and endnotes, both of which can be used to cite references. They are flexible in their usage. In addition to citing references, they can be used to add important explanatory or background information that would make the main document more cumbersome and difficult to read if it was included inline.
In Microsoft Word footnotes and endnotes are basically the same thing. The primary difference is their location.
A second difference is that footnotes appear on the page where they are inserted and cannot be moved to the end of the book.
When you insert a footnote reference mark, you’ll see a very small superscript number added where your cursor was and Word will jump to the bottom of the same page where you will see the same number in a small font. Place your cursor just after that number and type the actual footnote.
To return to your place in the document, click the number beside the footnote.
Inserting an endnote works the same way except the endnote can be set to appear after the last paragraph of the section you’re working on or at the end of the entire document.
Go to the end of the section or document and place your cursor just after the endnote character. Type your note.
With endnotes set to appear at the end of a section, they can appear in some sections and be suppressed in other sections, thereby being pushed to the end of the entire document.
When using this method to have your endnotes display at the end of a book, you have to tell each section not to display them until you come to the last one – the one where you want them to be.
To tell Microsoft Word not to display your endnotes in a section, you must suppress them on a section by section basis.
If the checkbox is greyed out and unavailable:
You should now be able to check the box to Suppress Endnotes which was mentioned earlier.
The same options for suppressing endnotes until the end of the document are available in Microsoft Word for Macs but the path to them is different.
To be sure End of Section is selected:
Bonus hint: I’ve rarely heard this tip mentioned, but in Microsoft Word for Windows and Mac, you can also open the options box where you check to suppress endnotes by carefully holding your mouse or trackpad in the top half of the ruler that sits just above your document. Hold your mouse or trackpad inside the ruler, but near the top edge and double-click.
If your writing requires you to accurately keep track of references in your document and to include specific citation styles for each of them, keep reading.
At the top of the form that opens, you should see a dropdown box that will probably say “Book” if this is the first time you’ve used it. In the current version of MS Word there are sixteen different types of references listed, plus one for miscellaneous.
The numbers, types, and names of the fields in the form vary, depending upon the type of reference you are citing. For example, if you are citing a book and you’ve selected Book as the reference type, you’ll see slightly different fields to fill out than you might if you were citing a page on a website or a work of art.
MS Word will keep track of the references you cite by storing them in a Master list. If you need to cite the same source later in the current document, or even in a new document, you can search the list or master list, select the source and cite it without having to fill in the information again. Entries in the Master List are editable.
To use the Master List of citations in MS Word for Windows, click the References tab, then click the button labeled Manage Sources in the Citations & Bibliography section.
To use the Master List of citations in MS Word for Macs, click the References tab, then click the button labeled Citations in the Citations & Bibliography section. A sidebar will open. Locate and click the gear icon in the lower right corner of the sidebar. Select Citation Source Manager.
One nice thing about the way Microsoft Word manages citations is that it is incredibly easy to create a bibliography based on those citations at the end of your document.
When you are ready to create the bibliography, just open the References tab, and in the same area where you chose which style of citation you would use, click the button labeled Bibliography. You will be given a choice to label it Bibliography or Works Cited.
A bibliography (or a list of works cited) will magically appear at the end of your document with the resources you cited presented in a list that is properly formatted according to the citation style you chose earlier.
If you are writing a book and intend to format it using Vellum, we also have a tutorial about using bibliographies in Vellum.