I'm often faced with the task of creating a bibliography for a book I'm editing, but I hate typing in all those entries from scratch. Lazy fellow that I am, I've figured out an automated way to turn parenthetical notes into bibliography entries. It's longish, but it sure beats doing it by hand. You may need to modify the procedure a bit to fit your own needs. Still, this article will give you the general idea.
Let's say we've got a document full of parenthetical notes, like this one:
(Jack M. Lyon, Total Word Domination [PocketPCPress, 2001], 121.)
The first thing we need to do is get all the notes out of there so we can turn them into bibliography entries, like this:
Lyon, Jack M. Total Word Domination. PocketPCPress, 2001.
If you need to do this with lots of documents, you'll want to look at our Puller program:
http://www.editorium.com/puller.htm
If you only need to do this with a document or two, you can use this sneaky little method:
1. *Back up your documents* in case anything goes wrong. There, you've been warned.
2. Click Tools > Replace.
3. In the Find What box, enter this:
(*)
4. With your cursor still in the Find What box, click the No Formatting button to remove any formatting that may be applied to the box.
5. In the Replace With box, enter this:
^&
6. With your cursor still in the Replace With box, click the No Formatting button to remove any formatting that may be applied to the box.
7. Click the Format button (you may have to click the More button before it's available) and then Font.
8. Under Effects, put a check in the box of an effect you *know* is not in your document. Shadow should do nicely. You'll probably want to avoid using italic or bold, which probably *are* used in your document.
9. Click the OK button. The Replace With box should now be labeled as "Shadow."
10. Put a check in the Use Wildcards checkbox.
11. Click Replace All.
All of your parenthetical notes will now be shadowed. Isn't that exciting?
Now get rid of everything in your document that's not shadowed, leaving only the parenthetical notes:
1. Click Tools > Replace.
2. Clear any text from the Find What box.
3. Click the Format button and then Font.
4. Make sure the check in the box next to Shadow is *blank*--no checkmark, either black or gray.
6. Click the OK button. The Find What box should now be labeled as "Not Shadow."
7. Clear any text from the Replace With box.
8. With your cursor still in the Replace With box, click the No Formatting button to remove the formatting applied to the box.
9. Remove the check from the Use Wildcards checkbox.
10. Click "Replace All."
Wow, the only thing left in your document is a bunch of shadowed text in parentheses. You want each note to be followed by a carriage return, so if some of them aren't, you may need to put some in:
1. Click Tools > Replace.
2. With your cursor in the Find What box, click the No Formatting button to remove the formatting applied to the box.
3. In the Find What box, enter this:
)
4. In the Replace With box, enter this:
)^p
5. Click "Replace All."
Now you may need to get rid of double returns:
1. Click Tools > Replace.
2. In the Find What box, enter this:
^p^p
3. In the Replace With box, enter this:
^p
4. Click "Replace All."
If you think all of this is too much work, you really should check out our Puller program.
What's next? Well, for starters, let's get rid of our opening and closing parentheses:
1. Delete the parenthesis at the beginning of your first note and the end of your last note.
2. In the Find What box, enter this:
)^p(
3. In the Replace With box, enter this:
^p
4. Click "Replace All."
Now let's get those names transposed:
1. Click Tools > Replace.
2. With your cursor in the Find What box, click the No Formatting button to remove any formatting that may be applied to the box.
3. In the Find What box, enter this:
,( *))
4. In the Replace With box, enter this:
^t1
5. Put a check in the Use Wildcards checkbox.
6. Click "Replace All." There should now be a tab following each name in your document. Please note that if you've got "Jr.," "Sr.," "Ph.D.," and so on with some of those names, you'll need to get the tab *after* the suffixes and make sure your commas are right. Remember that you can use Find and Replace to help you with this.
7. Click Edit > Select All to select all the text in your document.
8. Click Table > Convert > Text to Table.
9. In the dialog box that appears, make sure "Number of columns" is set to 2 and "Separate text at" is set to Tabs.
10. Click the OK button. Your notes are now in two columns, with names in the first one and the bookish stuff in the second one.
11. Use your mouse to point at the top of the first column. A little black arrow should appear, pointing down.
12. Click the left mouse button to select the column.
13. Click Edit > Copy to copy the column.
14. Create a new blank document.
15. Click Edit > Paste. The name column should now be all by itself in the new document.
16. Put your cursor somewhere in column and click Table > Select > Table to select the column.
17. Click Table > Convert > Table to Text.
18. Under "Separate text with," select "Paragraph marks" and click the OK button. You've now got a list of names *not* in a table.
19. Download and install our free NameSwapper macro:
http://www.editorium.com/freebies.htm
20. Run the macro to transpose all those names to last name first. Pretty slick, no? Don't go sorting names or deleting duplicates just yet.
21. You guessed it, click Edit > Select All to select all those transposed names.
22. Click Table > Convert > Text to Table.
23. In the dialog box that appears, make sure "Number of columns" is set to 1 and "Separate text at" is set to Paragraphs.
24. Click the OK button. Your names are now back in a column.
25. Put your cursor somewhere in the column and click Table > Select > Table to select it.
26. Click Edit > Copy to copy the column.
27. Switch back to your main document.
28. Use your mouse to point at the top of the first column. That little black arrow should appear again.
29. Click the left mouse button to select the column.
30. Click Edit > Paste Cells to replace the column with your new one full of nicely transposed names.
Wow, thirty steps! That may be a record. I sure hope I got them all right.
Now let's de-table-fy your notes:
1. Put your cursor somewhere in the table and click Table > Select > Table to select it.
2. Click Table > Convert > Table to Text.
3. Under "Separate text with," select "Other" and put some weird character in the little box. I like to use the tilde character (~), which you'll find on the upper left of your keyboard. Click the OK button to get rid of the table cells and hook your names back up with their notes.
Easy sledding from here, so I won't outline the rest of the steps in detail, but here's the basic procedure:
1. Remove the check from the Use Wildcards checkbox.
2. Find the tildes and replace them with nothing.
3. Find all occurrences of a space followed by an opening bracket ( [) and replace them with a period followed by a space (. ).
4. Get rid of the closing brackets and page numbers by doing a wildcard search for this (yes, this will work on a Macintosh)--
]*[^013]
--and replacing it with this (note the period):
.^p
5. Replace Shadow with Not Shadow.
6. Sort the notes alphabetically and get rid of duplicates, using the automated techniques explained here:
http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1702467672
7. Go to the top of your document and type "Bibliography." You'll probably need to do some cleanup, but basically you're done. Now, wasn't that easier than typing all those entries by hand?
To learn more about searching with wildcards, download our free paper "Advanced Find and Replace in Microsoft Word":
http://www.editorium.com/ftp/advancedfind.zip
_________________________________________
RESOURCES
Need more help automating bibliographies and notes? You may want to look at EndNote, a Microsoft Word add-in designed specifically for that purpose:
http://www.endnote.com/enhome.asp
You must be logged in to post a comment.