Error in sorting references when two references have the same year and authors

I’m having an issue with the Cite While You Write function in Word. I have a situation where I am citing two references with identical year and authors for the first time in one spot in the manuscript. The reference should look like this…

Smith (1996a, 1996b)

but instead I get this…

Smith (1996b, 1996a)

The journal asks that references in contributions to their journals be sorted by date and then by author. I have done this by selecting the “Year + Author” format for the output style in Endnote. However, this still results in the reference being rendered as “Smith (1996b, 1996a)”.

I checked to see if this could be because it is sorting the references by order in the bibliography if year and authors are identical. This is not the case, in the bibliography Smith 1996a comes before Smith 1996b. I also checked to see if maybe it was using publication date to determine which comes first if year and authors are identical; this is not the case as the two have no publication date information. I also tried changing the order of the references as cited under “Edit and Manage Citations”, but even switching the two causes no difference.

I have no idea what is causing this. If I cannot find a solution I will have to adjust the order of the citations manually.

I suspect something like title or some other aspect is causing it – did you try replacing one “Smith” author info into the other to make sure they are exactly identical? I agree – I like to solve puzzles like this. But to do so I would need to have all of the fields for the two citations, the ref types, the style and probably something else I am not thinking of. Can you add a short word doc with the offending formatted pair to play with? I am not sure word docs are accepted as attachments to this forum, but if not - try to rename it to .txt and then attach, reporting what the suffix should be? I won’t be at a computer again until next week though.

agreed; I’ve often found a sneaky space sitting before the author’s name in one version. Or possibly a space between the comma and first name.

If you look at the references’ summaries, there is a #number after each reference in the title of the pane at the top. Maybe your 1996a was assigned a # greater than 1996b, and those numbers determine the order. In that case, removing 1996b from your EN database and adding it back could assign it a larger integer than 1996a, and show them in the order you prefer.

I checked the author names, both are spelled the same with no spaces. I also checked the reference numbers and the reference being treated as “1996b” was created before “1996a”. The title of “1996b” also comes before “1996a”, the former starts with an “A” and the latter starts with a “G”.

I tried replicating the problem in a fresh document and it did not replicate the problem. However, if I called one reference before the other then it would cite them backwards. I.e.,…

(Smith, 1996a). The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog (Smith, 1996b, 1996a).

But then if I changed the order the citations are called in the “Edit and Manage Citations” window I could get them to go in the “a, b” order. However, this would not work if I tried it in the document I am trying to edit. Even stranger, copy-pasting the sentence where this occurs and pasting it in a document with the same style causing the problem to fix itself.

I wonder if something got screwed up in Word’s Cite While You Write function in this document — like leftover code or something — and that is what is causing this.

Then to test the leftover code possibility, first make a copy of the document. -then you can convert to unformatted citation (temporary NOT PLAIN) citations - then, to clean up the text - remove field codes – by first selecting all (ctrl+A) then ctrl+6 or select Tools → Endnote → Remove Field Codes → save the manuscript under a new name- if any bibliography remains - delete it. now update citations and bibliography and see what happens!

Nope, still cites the reference as (Smith, 1996b, 1996a).

At this point I just ended up reformatting every occurrence of this manually, as the journal requires the final submission to have no field codes or Cite While You Write tags.