EndNote users sometimes complain that EndNote is inserting author initials in the citations in the text of their paper, for example:

The outcome of such studies has been inconclusive (C. Wilson et al., 2007), although some studies have given more consistent results (T. W. Wilson et al., 2007).

In fact, this practice is consistent with the requirements of some standard style manuals.

For example, the fifth edition of the APA Publication Manual (section 3.98) states: "If a reference list includes publications by two or more primary authors with the same surname, include the first author's initials in all text citations, even if the year of publication differs. Initials help the reader to avoid confusion within the text and to locate the entry in the list of references."

However you should make sure that all publications by the same author in your EndNote library have the author's name entered in the same format. If the author is entered as "Wilson, C. J." in one reference in your library, and as "Wilson, Christopher J." in another reference, EndNote will not be able to establish that these are the same author. So you may find you have incorrect citations like this:

This proposition has been thoroughly examined in a recent paper (C. J. Wilson, 2007), although a previous study by the same author was less conclusive in its findings (Christopher J. Wilson, 2006).

If this occurs, use the Search function in EndNote to search for all occurrences of the author in your library, and edit the references to make sure that you are always using the same form of the author's name.

When you look at the references in your library, you may think that the authors are entered in identical fashion, but sometimes the differences are difficult to detect. For example, there may be a space at the end of the name in one of the references. The best solution is to copy the name from one of the references, and paste it into the other reference(s) to ensure that the names are identical.

Editing the Output Style to Remove All Initials in Citations in the Text

If you do not want EndNote to put any initials in citations in the text of your document, you can edit the output style to turn off this feature.

In EndNote, click on Edit>Output Styles, and then select Edit "[name of the style]".

This will open the style edit window.

On the left-hand side, under Citations, select Ambiguous Citations. Uncheck the box that reads Include author initials or full name in citation.

On the left-hand side again, under Citations, select Author Name. Uncheck the box that reads Use initials only for primary authors with the same name.

Close the edit window and save the changes when prompted.

In Word, use the EndNote Update Citations and Bibliography command (or the Format Bibliography command in earlier versions of Word) to reformat the references in your document using the amended output style.