How to Check Parenthetical Citations Efficiently

Daniel J. King

These instructions are for scholars who write papers using parenthetical citations. As a professional copyeditor, I learned a procedure that allows one to check parentheticals quickly. For my example here, I am using the capstone paper I wrote for my bachelor’s degree, years before I became a copyeditor.

In my capstone, my parentheticals consisted of the author’s last name followed by a comma and the page number(s). This procedure will work for any kind of citation wrapped in parentheses, however. (Note that I work with invisible characters displayed, so that spaces and paragraph returns can be seen.)

Here is my reference list. I must check every parenthetical to make sure the source is included in the reference list, the author’s name is spelled correctly, and the format is consistent.

1. Make a copy of your document. This procedure will destroy your paper, so only perform it after you have made a copy.

2. Open the Find and Replace window.

3. Check the box that says Use wildcards. Wildcards allow you to do complex searches. (Look into Word’s Help menu for more information on finding and replacing text using wildcards.) In the Find what field, enter “\((*)\)”. This expression will find everything inside parentheses. Move the cursor to the Replace with field and then select the Highlight option from the Format menu. (Depending on your citation style, you may need to move the last names of authors into some of the parentheticals before running this search.)

4. If you press Find Next, it should select a parenthetical.

5. Press Replace All to highlight everything in parentheses.

6. Clear the Find what field. Uncheck the Use wildcards box. With the cursor in the Replace with field, press the No Formatting button to clear the Highlight formatting.

7. With the cursor in the Find what field, press the Highlight option in the Format menu twice, so that it searches for Not Highlight. Make sure there is nothing in the Replace with field.

8. Press Replace All to delete everything that is not highlighted.

9. Search for Highlight and replace with Not Highlight to remove all the highlighting.

10. Clear the formatting, and then search for “)(” and replace with “^p”. This will find back-to-back parentheses and replace them with paragraph returns.

11. Press Replace All to put each parenthetical on its own line.

12. Delete the leftover parentheses at the beginning and end of the list. Then select all the text and press the Sort button.

13. Press OK to sort the lines alphabetically.

14. This is a good time to look for inconsistencies in the format of your parentheticals.

15. Delete any lines that are not citations.

16. Now you can open your original file and compare your reference list to the alphabetical list of parenthetical citations you just generated. Gratz! There aren’t many sources in my example here, but I’ve used this procedure when copyediting books with hundreds of references, and it saves a great deal of time. With the lists side by side like this, it is easy to see if there are cited sources that are missing from the reference list or sources in the reference list that are not cited in the paper.