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.
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APA style issues
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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:
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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 |
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Put the title of a document (PDF, Word, Excel, etc) in the Series Title field:
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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
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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".
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