Introduction

eXtyles Standards Reference Processing will perform two functions: (1) identify the reference type (e.g., journal, standard, book) and (2) identify and character style the semantically distinct elements of the reference entry. The character styles that are applied are color-coded for easy visual identification. In this way, an editor can quickly see the varius distinct parts of the reference, which will facilitate efficient copyediting (see “Character Styling of References” further on for more information).

Paragraphs that are styled as Applicable Documents, Normative References, or Bibliographic Reference are processed during this step. After running Cleanup and applying the correct paragraph styles from the Style Paragraphs palette, select Advanced Processing > Standards Reference Processing from the eXtyles menu.

The following sections describe the Standards Reference Processing behavior for both standard references and other references (e.g., references to journals, books, and so on).

Automatic Processing of Standards References

The Standards Reference Processing feature processes standards that may appear in bibliographic reference lists. It also processes references to standards in normative reference lists. For example

A standard reference in a bibliography or non-normative reference list (Applicable Documents) will be wrapped in the eXtyles tag <std>, indicating a standard citation.

In all cases, no reformatting is done to avoid introducing errors in designations. Bibliographies and normative reference lists will still need the careful attention of a copy editor to ensure that your organization’s editorial style is enforced.

Each element in a standard reference is character-styled by eXtyles Standards Reference Processing. The following table includes some examples of common reference components and their element names.

Automatic Processing of Other References

Standards Reference Processing acts on all properly styled references in addition to standards. For example, after Standards Reference Processing, a typical journal reference looks like this:

And a typical book reference looks like this:

Non-journal and non-book references include conferences, working papers, unpublished theses, and other works. In these cases, eXtyles Standards Reference Processing will not fully character-style the reference; only a few key components of the reference will be identified: the author names(s), the publication year, and the reference number (if present). As with standard, journal, and book references an editor will have to carefully edit these reference types to ensure conformance with your organization’s editorial style.

Each component of the reference is identified and color-coded to facilitate efficient copy editing. The first item is the reference type tag, which specifies the type of reference that eXtyles has identified. Possible types are:

• <jrn> Journal references
• <bok> Book references
• <edb> Edited book or book chapter references
• <conf> Conference proceeding
• <eref> Reference to a website
• <lgl> Citation of a legal case or statute
• <ths> Reference to a thesis/dissertation
• <other> References to working papers, patents, maps, and other documents
• <unknown> Unsupported or otherwise unknown reference type

Reference types might occasionally be incorrectly identified as <bok> or <unknown>. Misidentification is usually the result of a punctuation error by the author or a pattern that eXtyles does not support.

Each element in a reference entry is identified and tagged appropriately by eXtyles during Standards Reference Processing. The following table includes some examples of common reference components and their element names:

Viewing References

If necessary, use the Hide Tags function to turn off and on the display of reference type tags (<jrn>, <bok>, etc.). 

Reference Processing Query Insertion

If eXtyles adds queries (which appear as Word comments) during Standards Reference Processing, an alert will appear after processing is complete to indicate the number of queries added. No alert is shown when queries have not been added. You can view or hide queries via the Review ribbon > Show Markup > Comments.

Manual Editing and Reference Reprocessing

Once a reference has been tagged with a type (e.g., <std>, <jrn>), it will not be reprocessed if you rerun Advanced Processing > Standards Reference Processing. eXtyles ignores tagged entries on successive passes of this function. If you wish to reprocess a reference after making some changes to it, you can remove the reference type tag. For example, the following reference failed to process correctly because of the double punctuation after the volume number:

You can fix the punctuation manually—that is, delete the extra colon after the volume number—and then remove the reference type tags (by backspacing over the tag, or by selecting the tag and cutting it with Control-X) so that the reference looks like this:

After selecting the Standards Reference Processing menu item again, the reference will be properly restructured as shown here:

Hiding the reference type tags is not the same thing as deleting them. To reprocess a reference, you must actually delete the tags at the start and end of a reference. Hiding them with the Hide Tags menu item will make the tag disappear on screen, but it will not cause a reference to be reprocessed.

Errors can be fixed even without removing the colored highlights and styles. Standards Reference Processing removes all highlighting before reprocessing a reference. Colored highlights and styles are reapplied before the results of the Standards Reference Processing function are displayed on screen.

Character Styling of References

When references are processed by eXtyles, Word character styles such as bib_article, bib_journal, and so on are automatically applied to each part of the reference text. If you manually edit a reference after reference processing, be sure that the character styles are correctly applied to the edited text. These character styles can be applied just like any other character styles in Word; that is, via Word’s Styles feature (in Word 2016, access this menu on the Home tab or press Control + Alt + Shift + S).

In some unusual cases, even when a reference is correctly copyedited, eXtyles may fail to process it correctly. In such cases, you should edit the reference by hand and then apply the character styles directly from the Word Style feature.

The character styles should be applied only to the actual content that is typically highlighted, not to surrounding punctuation. For example, if your organization’s style includes parentheses around the year of publication, apply the bib_year character style to just the year itself, such as (1995), and not to the surrounding punctuation.

Styles that may be used for reference entries include the following: