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APA (6th Edition) Referencing Guide

Referencing Guide based on the 6th Edition of APA style

APA and EndNote

EndNote is a very useful tool for coordinating your research, and it helps you to structure your in-text citations and reference list. However, it's not a perfect system, and you do need to know a few things to get the most out of it. We recommend looking at the EndNote LibGuide's Getting Help page for more details on how to use the programme.

Below are answers to the two most common issues people have with using EndNote and APA. You can consult the FAQs or contact us for more help.

APA style issues

  • The standard APA 6th edition has errors in EndNote X9
  • A corrected style is available
  • Download the new style from Referencing styles

Websites in APA style in EndNote

You will almost always need to input a website or a document from the web into EndNote manually. APA has different rules for formatting the titles of your reference depending on whether you have a web page (e.g. file extensions like .html, .aspx, or .php) or a document hosted on the web (e.g. .pdf, .docx, or .xls).

Web page titles are not in italics, but the titles of documents are in italics.

Put the title of a web page in the Title field in EndNote:

Screenshot of Endnote showing web site titles in the Title field

This should format the web site like this:

Waratah Wynyard Council. (n.d.). Location of public toilets. Retrieved from http://www.warwyn.tas.gov.au/page.aspx?u=266

Put the title of a document (PDF, Word, Excel, etc) in the Series Title field:

Screenshot of Endnote showing title of documents in the Series Title field

This should format your citation like this:

Department of Health and Aging. (2006). My asthma action plan. Retrieved from http://edocs.willoughby.nsw.gov.au/DocumentViewer.ashx?dsi=4337636

 

Authors appearing with initials in the text

Sometimes EndNote will start putting initials next to the authors' names in your in-text citations. This is because it has registered your authors as different people, and it is programmed to use initials to help readers tell the difference.

There are times in APA when you should use initials to distinguish between two authors with the same surname (see this blog post for more details), but if you find EndNote is using too many initials incorrectly, you can edit the style.

In EndNote go to "Edit > Output Styles > Open Style Manager. Select the APA version you are using and click the "Edit" button. Then go to "Ambiguous Citations" under "Citations" and uncheck the "Include author initials or full name in citation" option.

You may also need to go to "Author Name" and uncheck the option to "Use initials only for primary authors with the same name".

Uncheck the "include author initials" box Uncheck the "use initials" box

 

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Creative Commons Licence
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International License. Content from this Guide should be attributed to James Cook University Library. This does not apply to images, third party material (seek permission from the original owner) or any logos or insignia belonging to JCU or other bodies, which remain All Rights Reserved.

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