Author Abbreviation

EndNote EndNote How To
1

How do I get Endnote not to abbreviate one of my authors. For instance, if I want to cite the following:

U.S. Geological Survey, (2016), National Water Information System data available on the World Wide Web (USGS Water Data for the Nation), accessed February 10, 2016, at URL.

If i enter the author as U.S. Geological Survey, I’ll end up getting:

Survey, U. S. G. (2016), National Water Information System data available on the World Wide Web (USGS Water Data for the Nation), accessed February 10, 2016, at URL.

Thanks.

2

Add a comma to the end of the string in the Author field of your record. (This works great as long as the name doesn’t have any internal commas in it.  If it does, come back.)  

3

I do have the name with internal commas in it: “National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine”

What should I do to prevent Endnote abbreviating it as
“E. National Academies of Sciences, and Medicine”

4

try doubling up the commas

National Academies of Sciences, , Engineering, and Medicine,

not sure that works with two internal commas

5

thank you. Double up like the following works for me:
National Academies of Sciences, , Engineering, and Medicine

6

You only need to double up the first comma:

National Academies of Sciences,, Engineering, and Medicine

I teach the students to think of commas in the name fields as of field delimiters. Once you have understood this ruleset, it’s all logical (more or less :wink: )

  • The first comma will always seaparate a last name (left of the comma) from a given name.
  • The second comma separates the given name from a static suffix (which won’t undergo any swapping around or abbreviating). E.g. King, Martin L., Jr.
  • Any further comma really is a comma.
  • The first comma is treated according to the context (not present, whe given name precedes surname, obviously,…).
  • The suffix is always separated from the preceding namepart by a comma.
  • If no comma is present, it interprets the last word as a last name, so U.S. Geological Survey is interpreted as if you entered Survey, U.S. Geological.

→ What you have to do with organisational names is, enter what I call an “empty given name field”:

  • If the organisation name has no comma, add the comma at the end.
  • If the organisation name has one or more comma, add a comma next to the first one in the name. This makes EN think of an empty given name field and just place the suffix next, which is always preceded by a comma, so it formats the name as intended.

EDIT: corrected the case of no comma in a name field, added examples and improved some wording.