APA and frustration!

Hi,

I’m writing my thesis in APA (5th) and while it’s handy to be able to have the library, my (in text) citations are not correct- or at least some of them- and it won’t let me correct them. I’ve tried everything. It also puts my reference list in single space and won’t let me change that as well. It seems silly that after I’ve finished this monster of a paper, I’ll have to go back, unformat everything and manually change it. Isn’t there a better way? I’m using the newest version of endnote and microsoft word 2007.

Please help!

Jazzy

What isn’t right and how are you trying to change them?  Do you mean when you try to apply formating to the the citations or reference list?  If you think the citations are wrong you need to change the style (but be certain that what you want is what is required by the publisher).  To change the spacing you can change it in the “format bibliography” dialog window, layout. 

Wow Leanne- thanks! My bibliography is just fine now. I may have to go in and tweek it here and there, but for the most part it’s great!

In the in-text citations (this is a thesis for my degree… Publication? well, maybe if I’m lucky!) it just seems to take the citations and put them in the way it wants to. APA (fifth edition) is very complicated, I know. In-text citations usually have just the last name of the author(s) and the year. Then anyone who wants to know more can check the bibliography at the end. I have it set for APA format and it some citations have first names in there- which it won’t let me take out, and others have first initials - same thing. But others are just fine. Also, in APA the first time someone is cited in APA, it’s done one way, then later it’s done another way- especially if there are multiple authors. So, I realize for those I’ll have to “disconnect” endnote (I guess) and redo? But why is it doing all those other strange things? I’ve looked in the part where the fields are displayed and nothing seems different from the ones that are right and the others. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Jazzy

All of the things you are noticing are because APA (and many other styles) want to make sure that it distinguishes between various authors of the same name.  First, if there are references are from the same author, you should copy and past the author name from one record to the others.  This is get rid of the first name/initials problem.  If they ARE different authors (Smith, J vs Smith, K) then they SHOULD be distinguished in your Citations. 

If you have latitude you can change your style to reflect your preference.  If you want the first and subsequent references to look the same, you can change that by editing the Citation/Author List  options, making first and subsequent the same.  The Ambiguous settings are there too.  You shouldn’t have to do much post processing at all, settings are changed.  But remember to check your University’s requirements before you mess with the style. 

and always save the file to a new name, so the APA 5th settings are preserved. 

Hello everybody,

I’m using the APA 6th ed. but I’m struggling to fix citations in the text. According to the APA style citations should be like this:

(Farrel, Brown, & Juls, 2013) or this (Farrel et al., 2013) when there is more than one Author and the citation has to be repeated for the second time.

My EndNote changes the citation (Farrel et al., 2013) into (Farrel, 2003), which is wrong according to the APA. It doesn’t include other AUTHORS, although I have fixed the settings Edit & Manage Citations, (Author and Year).

There is also another problem, EndNote adds author’s name (when it is not requested) , for eg. (J. Farrel, M. Brown, & G. Juls, 2013), where the J. M. G. stand for the Author’s name.

How do I get over it? Is there anyone who could help me? I have already kept in touch with the techinical assistance and I have followed their indication but still it doesn’t work.

Double posted this query.  Addressed in the “full first name appears in reference list” thread.  Probably best to just start a new thread next time?