Frequently
Asked Questions and Troubleshooting Guide
1. ReferenceChecker.
Why?
2.
Will it help me in my copy-editing work?
3. Can I try ReferenceChecker for free?
4. What sort of references
will ReferenceChecker
recognize?
5. Does ReferenceChecker
check numbered references as well as name+date-style references?
6. Does ReferenceChecker
recognize APA-style references?
7. Will ReferenceChecker
save me money?
8. How does your licensing system
work?
9. Can my colleagues use my copy of ReferenceChecker?
10. What is your privacy policy?
11. Can I send you some feedback?
12. Which versions of Word will ReferenceChecker
work with?
13. Is ReferenceChecker
available for Macs?
14. Why does ReferenceChecker
need to be run in Word?
15. I’ve clicked Go,
but ReferenceChecker
doesn’t seem to be doing anything. Why?
16. ReferenceChecker
has reported a reference mismatch, but I can see nothing wrong. Why is
this?
17. Why can’t I see line
numbers in my Word
document?
18. In the Word file, some of the
reference
items and/or citations appear with a dark grey background. What are
they, and
can ReferenceChecker deal with them?
19. Why does ReferenceChecker
think a month is an author?
20. What if I have both a
References section AND a Further Reading section? How
will ReferenceChecker deal with this?
21. Can ReferenceChecker
work with citations in tables and figure captions?
22. Do authors’ initials
in the reference
list need to have full points or spaces?
23. Does ReferenceChecker
check citations in footnotes?
24. Can ReferenceChecker
recognize phrases denoting publication status, such as “in
press”?
25. Can ReferenceChecker
recognize suffixes, such as “Jr.”?
26. Can ReferenceChecker
deal with complicated surnames, such as “van der
Waals”, “de Jong”,
“LaPlace”, etc.?
27. Does ReferenceChecker
work with citations where the publication year is
not always clear or when the author surname and year are split by a
large
number of words?
28. Does ReferenceChecker
ever make changes to the Word document?
29. Can ReferenceChecker
recognize Unicode / accented characters, e.g. à,
á, é, Å, ö, ó, ł,
ę, ñ, etc.?
30. Can I run ReferenceChecker
on more than one document at the same time?
31. Can ReferenceChecker
check text AFTER the References section?
32. Can ReferenceChecker
work on references in text that was not produced in Word?
33. Will ReferenceChecker
conflict with any of my macros or templates in Word?
34. How do I uninstall ReferenceChecker?
35. ReferenceChecker
sounds great, but I don’t want to spend large amounts of time
learning another
procedure. How long will it take to become familiar with using ReferenceChecker?
36. Why is ReferenceChecker
so cheap? What’s the catch?
37. I’ve run ReferenceChecker,
and there don’t appear to be any results in the
Results window. How do I know ReferenceChecker
has actually checked everything?
38. How do I know ReferenceChecker
has not hung?
39. Does ReferenceChecker
work in Word 2007?
1. [ReferenceChecker. Why?]
The idea for ReferenceChecker
was conceived by a group of copy editors and a
programmer. We’ve simply had enough of struggling over large
reference lists
for too long. How many times have you spent an hour or three,
meticulously
checking a HUGE reference list, only to find at the end that, well,
only a few
of many references had been cited? Or worse, the author was spot on – no uncited references
and no non-matching citations! After several
years in therapy, we’ve finally come up with a solution: get
the machine to do
the work. Now, this is important: as copy editors, we are highly
protective of
our profession. In no way do we advocate replacing our technical
know-how and
excellent skills as editors with a silicon mind in a beige box. We
believe that
where copy editing is concerned, the human copy editor reigns supreme.
It is a
skill built on years of experience . . . But reference checking is
another ball
game: it has to be done; we don’t like doing it; and ReferenceChecker
does it better and faster. What makes ReferenceChecker
particularly useful is that it can be run directly in Word. You do not
need to run anything else in any other program.
2. [Will it help me in my
copy-editing work?]
If
you work on Word documents with name+date (APA / Harvard style) or
number (Vancouver) references, ReferenceChecker
will save you time in checking the reference items and citations. It
will not
perform any other copy-editing checks for such things as spelling,
grammar,
punctuation, etc. (though, of course, some mismatches identified by ReferenceChecker
may be a result of
spelling or punctuation errors). In extensive tests on a large number
and variety of documents, ReferenceChecker has been
found to
perform impressively and with a very high degree of accuracy. It is the
responsibility of the user to deal with the results as they see fit,
and the
developers will not be held responsible for any errors arising as a
result of
its use.
3. [Can I try ReferenceChecker for
free?]
Yes, absolutely, with no catches.
Simply
follow the link to download ReferenceChecker. You
can use the program free of charge for 10
days from installation. To continue using ReferenceChecker
after the 10-day trial period, you
must purchase a licence. You will have a user name and licence key,
which we will send to you with instructions on how to remove the 10-day
limitation from the software. We do not offer refunds
once a licence has been purchased. Please read our Terms of Agreement
before downloading ReferenceChecker. Our policy is
simple: if you
don’t like it, you don’t need to buy.
4. [What sort of references will
ReferenceChecker recognize?]
ReferenceChecker
works
with references cited and listed in the Harvard, APA and
Vancouver styles, recognizing the following formats:
Smith (2002)
Smith (2001a) [but note that Reference
checker does NOT recognize "Smith, 2001 (a)"]
O’Connor and Smith (1994, in press)
Spiller et al. (2003)
(FAO, 2001; UN, 2002)
(e.g. Smith et al., 2000; FAO, 2002)
(American Psychological Association, 2002)
(Smith & Jones, 2001; Atkinson, 1998)
(Brown & Green 2001, Atkinson 2003)
(Atkins, Baker, & Giles, 1981–1982)
(Atkins, Smith, et al., 1981)
(Howard, 1934, p. 91)
(ibid., p. 257)
(see Longman, 2001, 2005a, b, forthcoming)
xyz[2; 11-19]
xyz[1-3]
xyz1, 4, 7
xyz[1], [6-8]
ReferenceChecker also recognizes items in
the reference list where the first author is given, followed by
“et al.”, e.g.
Smith, K. et al. 2004, Etymology. Words Journal, 24,
89-92.
5. [Does ReferenceChecker check
numbered references as well as name+date-style references?]
Yes. ReferenceChecker
recognizes the following styles of number (Vancouver)
references and citations:
“ . . . as shown
by Smith19”
or
“ . . . as shown by Smith [19]”
or even
“ . . . as shown previously [1,
6-8]”
6. [Does ReferenceChecker
recognize
APA-style references?]
Yes. APA-style references are
recognized
and
understood fully by ReferenceChecker. For example,
both “Atkins, Baker,
& Giles, 1981” and “Atkins et al.,
1981” are recognized by ReferenceChecker.
In APA-style references, in works of three, four or five authors, all
authors are cited
the first time the reference occurs, and in subsequent citations, only
the surname of the
first author is given, followed by et
al. and the year. The only exception to this is if
two references with the same year shorten to the same form, e.g. in
subsequent citations,
“ Atkins, Baker, Smith, & Giles, 1981” and
“Atkins, Smith, Baker,
& Giles, 1981” would be shortened to
“Atkins, Baker, et al., 1981”
and “Atkins, Smith, et al., 1981”, respectively.
Again, ReferenceChecker
fully understands all of these forms, but it is the responsibility of
the copy editor
to follow the rules of APA and to ensure that the individual citations
are in the appropriate
style established by the APA. So, in the above example, if the form
“Atkins et al.,
1981” were always used in citations instead of
“Atkins, Baker, & Giles, 1981”
on first mention, ReferenceChecker would not query
this.
Tip: Try selecting "All" in the
Output box and then copying and pasting the results into another
document to see at a glance whether and where the
author has adhered to the correct APA style of citing all authors
initially and then et
al. thereafter.
7. [Will ReferenceChecker save me money?]
Yes. ReferenceChecker
substantially reduces the average time required to check and fix
references: we estimate you will save 10-15% of time spent working on a
manuscript and that ReferenceChecker
will pay for itself after approximately 18 uses.
If you work on a large number of
publications in electronic form, you will save time
and time is money. It’s difficult to quantify exactly, but
let’s say
you copy-edit 15 average-sized papers (say, 30 folios, double-spaced
equivalent, 5 folios of references) in any one working week. Assuming
an average
manual reference-checking time of, say, 15 minutes per paper, over a
standard
working year, this would equate to approximately 176 hours. If ReferenceChecker
takes an average of 10 seconds to run each time, this would save you
approximately 174 hours
per year. Factor in your hourly rate, and you’ll see how much
you would save.
8. [How does your licensing system work?]
You can download a fully functional
copy of
ReferenceChecker
free of charge or obligation. You have 10 days from the date of
installation to try the software. To continue using the software beyond
the 10 day period, you will need to purchase a licence. To do that,
simply send an e-mail with your preferred user name to rc.tell@btinternet.com
and we will issue a PayPal payment request which will allow you to make
a payment using any major credit card or a PayPal account. As soon as
we have received confirmation of the payment, we will send you
your user name and licence key, which you will need to enter
in ReferenceChecker
to remove the 10-day limitation. If you wish to buy more than four
licences, you will receive a 20% discount per licence.
Note that we may change the user name(s) you supply
to ensure
uniqueness.
9. [Can my colleagues use my copy of
ReferenceChecker?]
Everyone who uses your computer and
your
copy of Microsoft Word will be able to use your copy of ReferenceChecker
as well.
If you would like your colleagues and friends to try ReferenceChecker,
feel free to give them your unlicensed copy to try,
or suggest they visit this site and download ReferenceChecker
for themselves. Please bear in mind, however, that after the 10-day
trial period, a licence is required for each computer on
which ReferenceChecker is installed and used.
10. [What is your privacy policy?]
We will never
share
your details
with anyone and will never send out any spam or marketing mail. Your
privacy is
guaranteed.
11. [Can I send you some feedback?]
We welcome any feedback: big or
small,
good or bad. We will listen to every user and bear in mind any
suggestions for
possible improvements. Please email us at rc.tell@btinternet.com
12. [Which versions of Word will
ReferenceChecker work with?]
ReferenceChecker
will
work with recent versions of Word for Windows. It has been developed
and
tested in Word 2000 and Word 2003.
13. [Is ReferenceChecker available for Macs?]
ReferenceChecker
has
been developed and tested under Windows
only. We are aware that there are significant differences between Word
for Windows and Word for the Mac and between the versions of Visual
Basic for Applications that the two platforms support. These
differences may prevent ReferenceChecker from
running on a Mac.
14. [Why does ReferenceChecker need
to be run
in Word?]
ReferenceChecker
was
developed and tested using Visual Basic for Applications. It is
template-resident, functions as a Microsoft Word macro, and therefore
needs to be run in Word
for Windows.
15. [I’ve clicked Go, but
ReferenceChecker
doesn’t seem to be doing anything. Why?]
First make sure that the
document to be
checked is open in Word. If you have more than one document open in
Word, make
sure the document to be checked is active. If your document is large,
has a
large reference list, and/or has a large number of citations, it will
take ReferenceChecker a longer period of time
to run (rarely longer than 30 seconds to a minute). Please be patient while ReferenceChecker
is working. Another
consideration is processor speed and RAM. The faster the processor, the
better;
and the more RAM you have installed, the better, and the faster ReferenceChecker
will run.
We would recommend at least a 300 MHz Pentium processor and 256 Mb of
RAM. On the vast majority of documents tested, reference
checking took no longer than 3–10 seconds per document.
16. [ReferenceChecker has reported a
reference mismatch,
but I can see nothing wrong. Why is this?]
Look carefully at the
author’s
text. Although ReferenceChecker adopts a
highly flexible approach to its checking procedure, it checks the EXACT
spelling of surnames.
For example, “Brown” from the reference list might
be cited as “Browne”,
so ReferenceChecker would correctly list this as a
discrepancy. Similarly, if you have
asked ReferenceChecker not to ignore case, if
“van der Waals” is listed at
the end as “Van der Waals”, again ReferenceChecker
will point this out to
you.
In our tests, we have found that ReferenceChecker
can miss citations and references because of corrupted formatting in
the Word document. For example, a closing square
bracket visible
to the human eye was not visible to ReferenceChecker or
to Word's Find
utility in some of our sample documents, therefore ReferenceChecker
missed a number of citations. Simply retyping the square
brackets corrected the problem. In
another case, a few references were merged into one
uneditable
paragraph. Removing all formatting and re-applying it allowed ReferenceChecker to
extract all the references correctly.
Is the year correct? Should it be
“1961” instead of
“1962”?
Is
there an extraneous space somewhere, e.g. “Sm ith and
Jones”?
Is there a missing period at the end
of the reference
in the reference list? It is important that the punctuation be
consistent within the same reference item for ReferenceChecker to
work properly. In particular, check the punctuation between surnames
and initials, and around the year of publication.
Does each entry under References
comprise one,
and only one, paragraph? If an entry has been split across two
paragraphs, e.g.
Ringrose,
S., Vanderpost,
C. and Matheson, W., 1996, The use of integrated remotely sensed and
GIS
data to determine
the causes of vegetation cover change in southern Botswana. Applied
Geography, 16, pp.
225–242.
then ReferenceChecker
will assume these are two entries: in this case Ringrose et al., 1996
being one entry and “GIS data” the start of
another. Any such split entries should be
re-combined by the copy editor so as to minimize any mismatches.
17. [Why can’t I see line numbers
in my Word document?]
If you wish to see the line numbers
in
your Word document (to help locate any reference
mismatches), switch to Word’s Print Layout
view. To do this, select View from
Word’s menu bar, then click on Print Layout.
Then, in ReferenceChecker, click
the button labelled Toggle
Line Nos or Alt+t. After
working on the document, remember to switch off line numbers (again
click on Toggle Line Nos
or Alt+t), unless you want them to appear in the final form of the
document.
18. [In the Word file, some of the reference
items and/or
citations appear with a dark grey background. What are they, and can
ReferenceChecker deal with them?]
These are likely to be field codes,
sometimes used by authors to link Internet/e-mail addresses or
reference items/citations. ReferenceChecker gives
you the option to remove ADD-IN field codes and leave the visible and
editable Word text intact or to leave the codes in without running ReferenceChecker.
However, for ReferenceChecker to be able to check
all references
and citations in a document, all codes should be removed. You can, of
course, save a copy of
the original file and then run ReferenceChecker
separately on a version of the file from which you allow ReferenceChecker
to remove the codes.
19. [Why does ReferenceChecker think a month
is an author?]
Sometimes, a month followed by a
year,
can cause a false alarm. For example,
“May (2000)” may cause ReferenceChecker
to treat "May" as an author who
published an article in 2000. It is impossible for ReferenceChecker
to know that
“May” in this case refers to the month of May, and
in this case, ReferenceChecker
would report this “citation” as having
“NO REF” if there was no match in
the References list. Similarly, a paper might even have a reference by
an author called May actually
listed in the References AND might mention “May,
2000”. There is no way of
knowing the difference, and ReferenceChecker would
rather alert you to this than gloss over it.
The rule of thumb here is that ReferenceChecker
would rather let you, the user, know of this,
rather than to miss anything important. With experience, you will
become familiar with how
ReferenceChecker works and how to interpret its
findings.
20. [What if I have both a References section
AND a
Further Reading section? How will ReferenceChecker deal with this?]
The
best way to deal with two (or more)
lists of references is to decide on which section is to be the
definitive
section and title. For example, if you have a paper with both a
References
section and a Further Reading section, you could use the References
section as
the main references section for ReferenceChecker to
use, style that section heading
accordingly (see Section 3(c) of Using
ReferenceChecker),
temporarily delete the heading for the Further Reading section, and
then run ReferenceChecker. After you are satisfied
and have dealt with ReferenceChecker’s
findings, simply reinstate any deleted headings (in this case, the
Further
Reading section heading).
21. [Can ReferenceChecker work with citations
in tables and figure captions?]
Yes, provided these appear before
the
References section. In addition, where number
references are
used, all the citations in the body text, including those in
tables and figure captions, must be arranged in the
intended final order (as they will appear
in print).
22. [Do authors’ initials
in the reference list need to have full points or spaces?]
No. ReferenceChecker’s
flexible approach means that it can recognize author initials with or
without
spaces and full stops/periods.
23. [Does ReferenceChecker check citations in
footnotes?]
Yes. ReferenceChecker
checks citations in both the main text and the footnotes
in a document. Any results for citations mentioned in the footnotes are
mentioned at the
end of the list of citations:
“___(p. X, f. Y) Citation details”, where
“X” denotes the page number, and
“Y”
denotes the footnote number.
24. [Can ReferenceChecker recognize phrases
denoting
publication status, such as “in press”?]
Yes. Phrases such
as “in
press”, “to be
published”, “submitted”,
“accepted”,
“accepted for publication”,
“received”,
“forthcoming”, and “submitted for
publication”
can be used in place of the
year. ReferenceChecker recognizes and
treats these as if they were the year of publication.
25. [Can ReferenceChecker recognize suffixes,
such as “Jr.”?]
Yes. ReferenceChecker
recognizes surname suffixes
such as “Jr”, “Sr”,
“II”, “III”, etc.
26. [Can ReferenceChecker deal with
complicated surnames,
such as “van der Waals”, “de
Jong”,
“LaPlace”, etc.?]
Yes. ReferenceChecker
recognizes surnames that include prefixes and
apostrophes and/or are in mixed case, e.g. van der Waals, de Jong,
LaPlace,
O’Malley
27. [Does ReferenceChecker work with
citations where the
publication year is not always clear or when the author surname and
year are split by a large number of words?]
In any text for ReferenceChecker
to work on, it must be clear exactly which year is
the year of publication; otherwise, ReferenceChecker
will report a mismatch, e.g. when the year of a later edition is given
“(Carnap
et al. 1929 [1973, p. 311])”. In dealing with cases when the
author surname and
year are split by several words, e.g. “Reeves realized that
citations are not always simple (1963, p. 46)”,
ReferenceChecker recognizes that
“1963” relates to a publication by
“Reeves”. ReferenceChecker can
recognize such
cases with up to 20 words between the author name(s) and the year.
28. [Does ReferenceChecker ever make changes
to the Word document?]
The only changes ReferenceChecker
will make to the Word document is when ADD-IN field codes
have been detected and removed. This will not affect any visible and
editable
text. In short, however ReferenceChecker
is run, the basic Word text will remain intact.
29. [Can ReferenceChecker recognize Unicode /
accented
characters, e.g. à, á, é, Å,
ö,
ó, ł, ę, ñ, etc.?]
ReferenceChecker
recognizes Unicode characters that represent the character sets of most
European languages. This includes letters with diacritics that are
variations on letters in the Latin alphabet.
30. [Can I run ReferenceChecker on more than
one document at the same time?]
No. ReferenceChecker
runs only on the currently active document in Word.
31. [Can ReferenceChecker check text AFTER
the References section?]
Any text in which citations are to
be
checked must be
positioned BEFORE the list of references. To avoid the possibility that
ReferenceChecker will include spurious items under References in its
output, and therefore a number of false mismatches, you can temporarily
move appendices, tables,
captions, etc. appearing after
the References list to another
file, or, if you want ReferenceChecker to search
those items for citations, move them temporarily before
the Reference list.
32. [Can ReferenceChecker work on references
in text that was not produced in Word?]
Yes. You can copy and paste the
text
from another application into Word: from Word’s Edit
menu, simply select the option
Paste Special, then select Unformatted Text
from the list. As long as
the text has no unusual codes or formats, and the characters have
converted
properly, ReferenceChecker should
work fine. Also, make sure that none of the reference items in the list
comprise more than one paragraph.
33. [Will ReferenceChecker conflict with any
of my macros or templates in Word?]
No. ReferenceChecker
will not conflict with any pre-installed or user-defined
macros or templates. ReferenceChecker can be
started in Word with a keyboard shortcut Alt+F2.
If this keystroke combination has already been assigned to another task
in Word, you can easily re-assign
either by selecting from Word’s menu: Tools/Customize/Keyboard.
Click in the box labelled Press
new shortcut key, press Alt+F2, then backspace/delete to
remove this keystroke combination, and then
enter your preferred keystroke combination, e.g. Ctrl+r. Click on Assign,
then Close.
34. [How do I uninstall ReferenceChecker?]
Please see Installation
.
35. [How long will it take to become familiar
with using ReferenceChecker?]
ReferenceChecker
has
been designed to be user-friendly and
to require a minimum amount of familiarization time. This means that
you, the
user, will not have to invest huge chunks of your valuable time in
getting to
grips with ReferenceChecker. You will soon get used
to how it all works. Try
experimenting first on a “test file”, and see what
you think. Try using
ReferenceChecker’s different features,
such as the Processing
and Output options. We estimate that it should take
no longer than half an
hour initially to understand the basic workings. After a few runs on
Word files, you
will soon become familiar with its interface.
36. [Why is ReferenceChecker so cheap?
What’s the catch?]
ReferenceChecker
is a
product aimed at copy editors and people
in academia. We believe it should be both extremely useful and
affordable to potential
users. We also believe that a user should be able to try before buying,
with absolutely
no catch, which is why we built a free 10-day trial into ReferenceChecker.
37. [I’ve run ReferenceChecker, and
there
don’t appear to be any results in the Results window. How do
I
know ReferenceChecker has actually checked everything?]
If you asked ReferenceChecker
to output Errors Only, in the Results window,
after “Citations” and
“References”, if no items are listed, then ReferenceChecker
has not found any reference mismatches. It can
happen! However, if you want reassurance(!) that
ReferenceChecker has done its job, you can of
course, request to see All of the output (Alt+a)
and then run ReferenceChecker again to see all the
citations and all the reference items that it has
checked.
38. [How do I know ReferenceChecker
has not hung?]
If ReferenceChecker is taking a long time, check the Status line at the bottom of the user interface. While ReferenceChecker
is working, the contents of this line should change rapidly,
displaying information about the tasks the program is performing and,
on the right, the
elapsed time in seconds. You are not expected to be able to
read the text on the Status line, but the fact that the
contents of the Status line
change is a good indicator that the program is running. How fast ReferenceChecker can check a document depends on the number of references and citations in that
document and on the processing power of your computer (the amount of RAM and processor speed).
39. [Does ReferenceChecker
work in Word 2007?]
Yes, we have tested ReferenceChecker in Word 2007 and found that it
works exactly as in Word 2003.
