Counting EndNote citations in Word 2007

[CC]

Hello. I have a strict word limit for a paper I'm writing, but internal
reference citations -e.g., (Smit et al., 1996) are not counted in the word
limit. There is no function, however, for excluding internal citations, as
there is with footnotes and endnotes. Can anyone offer a suggestion on how to
do the word count the without counting these internal citations? Microsoft's
helpline was unable to offer a solution.

I created the bibliography using EndNote X2, which merges and updates the
references into the document; so every instance is in a field between
parantheses/brackets. I know there is a an option to select "field" in the
Find &Replace funtion, but after the ^d comes up, I don't know what to put.

I don't know visual Basic and have very little experience with Macros; so if
there's any way to do this without those methods, that would be great. Many
thanks.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Use Alt+F9 to display the code of the field used by EndNote. Leaving the
codes displayed, search for ^d followed by a space and whatever the
beginning of the code is (for example, this would be REF for a
cross-reference or TC for a TC field). In the "Replace with" box, put ^&
(which just restores the found text) formatted as Hidden. Hide Hidden text
and take your word count, then Undo to remove the Hidden property.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[CC]

Hi there. I really appreciate your response - thanks! I tried this technique
with a small section of my thesis in order to test it out. I counted the
number of words in my citations myself and then followed your instructions in
order to compare the word count. The count after doing F&R was 1466/1477,
though my real count was 1460/1477. A difference of 6 words is significant,
I suppose, in such a small document, and my full working document is at least
10 times the size.

I was thinking that the 6 words actually coincides with the number of
replacements done by the F&R. A bit of a long shot, but I wonder if i should
subtract the number of replacements found from the subsequent word count.
Perhaps it might have something to do with the fact that there are sometimes
multiple citations within a single field code? e.g. (Smit et al., 1996; FAO,
2009; Nugent, 2001) Otherwise, I'm not sure what might be the issue and how I
might get around it.

Thanks for any other feedback you can offer. -cc

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It may well be that Word is counting each field as a word, even when hidden.
Do the parentheses still show when the fields are hidden? If so, perhaps
they're being counted as words.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[CC]

Hi. Yes, the parentheses (and their contents) still show after being hidden.
So you're probably right. I tried doing it again on a small paragraph of text
and the same thing happened with the word count exceeding the real count
exactly by the number of occurrences. That makes it easy to do another bit of
subtraction. Much better than any alternatives I had thought of, but now I
have to cut about 2000 words. Yikes! But thank you. -cc

 

[CC]

Actually, I realize that I wasn't doing the hide operation correctly. So I
tried again. The text, including the parentheses disappeared as they should
have, but the count remained the same.

I don't know what to make of it. I am hoping that somehow each replacement
is being counted in the word count and that I can just do the subtraction
thing previously mentioned. -cc

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I think that probably will be close enough to be safe; it certainly sounds
logical. And if the authority that is enforcing the word count limitation
complains, ask what method they are using to count the words, or how you can
count them more accurately. <g>

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org