Examples of citations using the Source Manager in Microsoft Word
S. P. Platt
09/02/2016
This is an example of a citation for a book (1). This is another: (2). Here is the first one
again: (1).
The list of references, with bibliographic details, follows at the end of the document. The
references are managed using the automatic features of Microsoft Word (3). (Did you see
how I just cited a website?) It is very easy.
Here are citations to some more references, of various types:
Research students and academic or academic-related staff undertaking original research need
to cite references to articles from journals in the scientific literature. As an example, just this
morning I cited a paper by Park and Miller (4) in a lecture discussing random number
generation. (I first cited (4) as a Ph.D. student myself. What a long time ago that seems to
be!) Another type of citation is to a conference publication; without wishing to blow my own
trumpet, here’s one of mine from last year (5). One thing you might notice is that there are
standard abbreviations which are commonly used (“Commun.” For “Communications”, etc.);
the rules for identifying these are specified in an international standard (6), which gives me
an opportunity to show how standards can be cited.1 In practice, however, you wouldn’t
normally use this standard, because there’s a very convenient online list available (7).
What have I missed? Well, the built-in reference manager is suggesting that I also might like
to refer to book sections, reports, documents from web sites, patents, and electronic sources
(discounting some other options which aren’t too likely to be useful to engineering students).
There’s also a miscellaneous option (which I used for standards). The tool built in to
Microsoft Word is very easy to use – so use it. Just fill in the fields it offers to you.
Remember that the purpose of citations is to make it possible for your reader to get access to
the documentary sources which you think are important. Therefore your references must be:
1

Complete

Accurate

Consistent
Talking of standards, the citations in this document follow ISO 690 (8). (See how I have placed a citation in a
footnote!)
References
1. Stroustrup, Bjarne. Programming: principles and practice using C++. Upper Saddle
River : Addison-Wesley, 2009. ISBN-13: 9780321543721.
2. Stewart, James W. The 8051 microcontroller: hardware, software and interfacing. Upper
Saddle River : Prentice Hall, 1999. ISBN-10: 013531948X.
3. Microsoft. Microsoft Word 2010. [Online] http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/word/.
4. Park, S. K. and Miller, K. W. Random Number Generators: Good Ones Are Hard To
Find. Commun. ACM. Oct. 1988, Vol. 31, 10, pp. 1192-1201.
5. Fidelity of energy spectra at neutron facilities for single-event effects testing. Platt, S. P.,
Prokofiev, A. V. and Cai, X. X. Anaheim, CA : IEEE, 2010. Proc. Intl. Reliab. Phys. Symp.
pp. 411-416.
6. International Organization for Standardization. Information and documentation - Rules
for the abbreviation of title words and titles of publications. Geneva : International
Organization for Standardization. ISO 4:1997.
7.
ISSN
International
Centre.
ISSN::LTWA
online.
www.isssn.org.
[Online]
http://www.issn.org/2-22661-LTWA-online.php.
8. International Organization for Standardization. Information and documentation Guidelines for bibliographic references and citations to information resources. Geneva :
International Organization for Standardization, 2010. ISO 690:2010.