Macro of the Month – December 2021 – CitationAlyse
Cross-checks the reference list against the in-text citations and flags potential inconsistencies
last updated: 4/1/2024
Welcome to the final newsletter of 2021. My thanks to everyone who signed up for the newsletter this year. One of the main benefits of macros is the time they save us as we’re editing. This month’s macro offers quite a time savings—not to mention relief from what can be a tedious task. There is also a tip about Word’s update to its comment functionality, and for those of you who have always wanted to learn to record macros, news of an upcoming webinar that will teach you how. I would also love to hear what you’d like to see the newsletter address in the future.
CitationAlyse
Do you find it tedious and time-consuming to compare in-text citations with the reference list to identify missing or erroneous elements? Instead of performing this check by hand, let CitationAlyse do the work for you. (Note that it does not work with footnoted or endnoted citations.)
First, place the cursor in the first item in the reference list (and temporarily delete any text that falls below the reference list). Run the macro. It generates a list of the citations and references, interleaving them alphabetically.
Now it’s your turn: Scan down the list looking for errors and omissions in the grouped citations and references. You may occasionally find text that is not a citation, like the Tariff Act 1879, which you can easily delete. If the list contains multiple works from one author, highlight all the related citations and references and run the macro again to order them by date.
You can also watch Paul Beverley’s tutorial about how CitationAlyse works.
Here are just some of the citation formats it can identify:
A.B. Smith, 2010a
Smith AB, 2012
Smith, 2013
Smith & Brown, 2014b
Smith et al, 2015
Smith, Brown and Green, 2016a
If your citations are written firstname lastname or embedded in the main text (rather than in a parenthetical), you can use CitationListEdit to clean up the query list generated by CitationAlyse.
CitationAlyse runs very quickly. It took only a bit over two minutes for a 110,000-word manuscript with 660 references and 1,030 citations.
Tip – Word’s Modern Comments
For users of Word 365, you may have noticed that Microsoft has changed how the comments function, making them more in-line with the cloud version of Word. Besides how cumbersome these so-called modern comments are to use, you cannot use macros to edit the text inside a comment bubble, and other comment-related macros may not work either.
You can reinstate the old comment functionality, for now at least, which will also restore the macro functionality. Check out this article on Microsoft’s support page. It provides screenshots showing you how to disable Modern Comments on both Mac and PC.
Upcoming Training
Did you know that you can create your own macro by using Word’s record macro function? In the Learn to Record Your Own Macro webinar, Pam Eidson, a nonfiction freelance editor based in Atlanta, US, will teach you how to record simple macros to speed up straightforward repetitive tasks.
This 1.5-hour webinar will be hosted by the Editorial Freelancers Association on January 20, 2022, at 7:00–8:30 ET.
The Newsletter in 2022 and Beyond
Macros help editors to be more productive and efficient, but they can be challenging to learn how to use and to stay on top of the newest developments.
How can I help you to incorporate macros into your editing workflow? What topics would you like to see the newsletter address in the coming year? Respond to this email and let me know.
Best to you and your loved ones as we head into a new year.
Jennifer