Same author, different name variants

EndNote EndNote How To
1

Hi there,

Can anyone tell me how I manage entering the same authors but with different name variants.

At the moment, EndNote treats each entry as a different author, and therefore gives unnecessary initials in citations. 

For example, ‘Katharine J. West’ has published under both this name and ‘Kate West’.  Same person, only needs to be cited as (West, year).  Instead, EndNote gives either (K. West, year) or (K.J. West, year), making it look like Kate is two people.  Annoying.

Ideas?

Cheers,

Lindy 

3

Thanks for the advice.

I hoped there would be a function that allows automatic linking of names, but you can’t have everything.

Thanks again,

Lindy 

5

I am also writing in science and indeed use the year letter approach.  The point is, will the functionality of the program allow that to be reflected automatically or will I need to go through a 100,000 word thesis with a fine tooth comb to check every possible confusion?

Where the program should say (West, 2003a) and (West, 2003b), it says, as noted above, (KJ West, 2003) and (K West, 2003).  Hence my annoyance.

This is not only imprecise, it is incorrect citation.  It looks in the text like there are two Wests commentating on the issue, when in fact there is just one.

7

Thanks.

I tried that, but that now creates the opposite problem: for different authors with same surname, their works are listed as (Turner 2008a) and (Turner 2008b), making it look like there is one Turner who contributed many works.

It looks to me like there is no real solution here, other than to change citations by hand later as per your earlier suggestion.

Perhaps name linking could be a function introduced to a later version of EndNote to deal with this situation.

Thanks for all the time you’ve devoted to my query. 

8

I would be inclined to say it is West’s problem if she is publishing under different names!