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Rules for Style Templates

Before we look at the section of the output style which specifies how the references are to appear in the bibliography at the end of the paper, we need to familiarise ourselves with the rules which EndNote uses to interpret the data which we are going to enter in the templates.

This is the most difficult aspect of creating an EndNote output style. Don't expect to master these rules at the outset. It takes some practice to become adept at applying these rules. Even those who are experienced in writing EndNote styles would admit that there is a lot of "trial and error" in creating an output style.

First we must be clear about two important terms:

• Field Names
  These are the headings that you see when entering data in an EndNote reference (e.g. Author, Title, Year, Journal). They vary depending on the reference type. In the style template, the field name represents the data in that field, so when you see "Journal" in a style template, it means "The contents of the Journal field in any given reference".
• Text
  The output style adds text and punctuation to the contents of the fields to create a formatted reference. Text may be a word (e.g. Editor) or an abbreviation (e.g. vol.)

The Four Rules for Working with Style Templates

These are described in the chapter entitled "Bibliographic Styles" in the EndNote manual (pages 392-394 of the Windows edition of the EndNote 7 manual; pages 346-348 of the Windows edition of the EndNote 6 manual). The manual is installed on your computer along with the rest of the EndNote software.

Read through this section of the manual. You will have to refer to this information repeatedly when creating styles, so it is worth printing out these pages.

The Four Special Formatting Characters

These are described in the chapter entitled "Bibliographic Styles" in the EndNote manual (pages 394-397 of the Windows edition of the EndNote 7 manual; pages 348-351 of the Windows edition of the EndNote 6 manual).

Read through this section of the manual. You will have to refer to this information repeatedly when creating styles, so it is worth printing out these pages.

Try our Style Templates Quiz

We have prepared a short quiz to test your understanding of the principles involved in creating style templates.

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