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Introduction – Checking APA and Harvard citations

I want to talk to you about references — the bibliographic sort that almost every academic paper and book contains at the end — and citations, the callouts for their reference partners. They’re not even a new invention, so at the dawn of the 21st century, I remember thinking: “Why have I had to check these for so long? Why hasn’t anyone tried to make it easier to check them?” I’d sought in vain to find a simple and affordable program to help with checking references and citations. In the information age, there must be something out there to do this, but my searches drew a blank. There were a small number of in-house and commercially available programs to work on references, but these seemed prohibitively expensive, inflexible, and restrictive in their functionality. Most seemed to be bibliographic authoring software to help authors compile reference lists and citations as they prepared their work prior to submission for publication, but none provided a simple solution to check references and citations after the text had been written.

Challenges

With a growing number of in-house and freelance copy-editors, there seemed to be a niche in the market for this type of software. After lengthy discussions with a programmer colleague, we came up with the name “ReferenceChecker” with the following desiderata:

• It should be affordable
• It should be easy to install and use, with minimum prior knowledge of using add-ins in Word
• It should be flexible yet require minimum input from the user
• It should be fast to use
• Its user interface should be clean, simple, and easy to understand
• It should present clear results and point the user directly to the exact place in the text where the discrepancies can be found
• It should understand the character sets of most European languages, including letters with diacritics that are variations on letters in the Latin alphabet
• It should recognize and check the most commonly used referencing systems, APA, Harvard, and Vancouver, and their numerous variants.

Could all this be done? Would it prove too much for a machine, to be able to carry out the manual checking tasks of an experienced copy-editor? We set about programming the code, testing, retesting, and reconfiguring the code many times to produce a working prototype. It worked in the early stages, and with the variety of examples of references and citations, but we soon found variants of names, years, punctuation, ordering, and so on that would warrant revisions to the software. Testing and development took about 5 months; finally, in early 2005, we were ready to unleash the beast into the Wild World Web.

It has been a considerable challenge, though not insurmountable, to iron out problems along the way. Things arose that we didn’t think would arise, and there were less-than-straightforward elements in bibliographic referencing that would require sophisticated code. Talking of code, the software comprises a Visual Basic application implemented in several thousand lines of code. Its size and complexity belie its simple interface and experience for the user; the user shouldn’t have to worry about how big or complex the software is, only how quick and easy it is to use.

Throughout its development, we introduced a number of additional useful features in ReferenceChecker:

• hyperlinked results that could be clicked on or scrolled through to take the user to the exact place in the text where the mismatch was found: either a reference item with no matching citation or a citation with no matching item in the reference list;
• the option to check with or without case sensitivity in author names;
• a feature to copy and paste the results;
• the option to view the results as a list of either (a) every single citation and reference item listed and checked or (b) mismatches only.

21st-century editing

In conceiving the idea for ReferenceChecker, I admit I had a few qualms. Would the “brain” of a machine perform as accurately and intelligently in this case as the brain of a human? When a human checks references and citations, they have learned how to recognize and compare the separate elements that constitute each reference and citation. My underlying apprehension was that if software could do the amount of work that would normally take a human, say, 15 minutes in an average-sized paper in a small fraction of the time, i.e. a few seconds, could this open a Pandora’s box of expectations? The answer is quite complex. By using, and still being in full control of, software to check the parts of a text that can be processed more quickly than by the laborious manual method, the copy-editor can concentrate on other, more important tasks that cannot be done by a machine, while maintaining a high level of accuracy. We’re still a long way off from machines being able to do the complete work of a copy-editor on a text, because of the vast complexities of human written language. With automated grammar, consistency, spell-checking, and text-analysis software, there are frequently false errors highlighted, because the software hasn’t been programmed to “look around” either side of a word or phrase to detect and understand the specific context and meaning intended by the author. In some cases, the software can’t possibly know if a spelling or punctuation is correct or not in a specific context, because it doesn’t have a human’s life experience.

Some examples:

• “man eating shark” or “man-eating shark”? Which is correct in the context of the subject matter? Either could be used, depending on the context. Should the software flag either of these as being incorrect?
• “It’s one mistake” or “Its one mistake”? Either could be correct, with or without the apostrophe, depending on the surrounding text.
• “… his parents, John Allen, and Rose Wood” or “… his parents, John Allen and Rose Wood”? Does this refer to two or four people? It could be either.
• “principal was investigated” or “principle was investigated”? Either is acceptable, but would it be appropriate for an automated checker to question the usage of either of these? Would it be remiss for it not to report a possible spelling error?

We encountered a few challenges while developing ReferenceChecker, and to deal with these, several sets of rules were implemented. There were rules to detect references and citations; rules to parse the references and citations; and rules to extract author surnames and years of publication. A number of “post-processing rules” were then incorporated to clean up the extracted references and citations, ignore spurious names, and make sense of all surnames and years of publication. A final set of rules compared references and citations, and generated the list of mismatches for the user to look through. In so doing, ReferenceChecker has been developed with intelligent design, working in a way as close as possible to how a human would recognize references and citations, that is, if it looks like a citation or reference to the human eye, ReferenceChecker will recognize and check it. It’s heartening to know we’ve saved many people many hours of working time, and to receive feedback and suggestions from our users. For the average full-time copy-editor, who might work on, say, 15 average-sized papers in a working week (e.g. 30 pages of A4 with five pages of references), and estimating about 15 minutes of reference-checking time per paper, we’ve calculated time savings of up to 174 working hours per year—that’s almost five working weeks!

About the author

Paul Sensecall is a full-time freelance (www.pseditorialservices.com) with over 20 years’ experience of copy-editing and proofreading academic material in the areas of science, technical, medical; social sciences and humanities. 

Hi, Louise! Can you tell us a bit about the nature of your business?

I’m a journalist by trade and I still write, although not so much these days. Mostly I edit – everything from books to websites and brochures – and I provide services from basic on-screen proofreading to structural editing and consultation. My specialist subjects are finance of all sorts and adult material – I’m increasingly working for self-publishers, especially those writing erotica, alongside a core clientele of financial institutions and traditional publishers.

Tell us about your journey to becoming a freelancer.

I moved into sub-editing some 12 years into my journalism career. During a long spell abroad I ended up working as an in-house editor at a major investment bank, but even before that I found I was being asked more and more to edit other people’s work written in English because of being a native speaker and having the skills. After I returned to the UK I decided to freelance instead of searching for an elusive staff job. It was necessity rather than choice but turned out to be a good decision.

What do you enjoy most about running your own business?

Where to start? I like having total control over my own time. I’m not a slave to the daily commute, I can take time off when I want (even if it’s just a half-day), I don’t need to ask a boss for time off to go to the dentist or wait in for a plumber, the postie knows I work from home so I’m always in for parcels… And on top of all that, I get to choose what work I want to take on.

What are the downsides to working for yourself, if any, and how do you overcome them?

Like a lot of freelances, I’m prone to cabin fever. Working alone at home means that if you’re not careful you can go for days without having proper human contact. I’ve tried working once in a while at a co-working space but I find it too distracting and I can’t play music, which I like to stream in the background. I get round the solitude by ensuring I have a good social life – for me this is essential as I also live alone and don’t want to become a total hermit. I also hate doing the books but, luckily, I have a very understanding accountant who works magic with the piles of receipts I send her.

What do you listen to when working?

I used to have Radio 4 on a lot but I find speech radio very distracting when working as I want to listen to the discussions. I switched to Radio 2 for a while, for the music, but the chatter in between songs drove me crazy. Spotify is my lifesaver – I have a paid subscription and have built up a huge library of playlists, which I select from depending what I’m working on and the mood I’m in. I listen to a huge amount of reggae, especially dub instrumentals, plus classical and film scores, rock and pop.

What is your most treasured work-related possession?

PerfectIt has bailed me out a few times when working on books of 600-plus pages! No matter how meticulous you are and how many items you log on a style sheet, it can still be easy to miss something. It’s very good at flagging up any inconsistencies. I always run PerfectIt at the end of working on a document, whatever the size, and recently I’ve started running it before an edit too as it can help you make styling decisions universally before you tackle things manually.

What do you enjoy doing when you’re not working with words?

Cooking. I love cooking – it’s how I relax. I’ve been working on writing a recipe book over the last two years – it’s currently in blog form, but I’m now whipping it  into shape as a book in my spare moments. My obsession with food extends to reading cookbooks for fun (I don’t necessarily cook from them) as well as eating and drinking outside the home. When I take proper time off, I eat, walk and explore my way round European cities and, if possible, hike too.

What’s your favourite book?

For work, it’s unquestionably my much-thumbed copy of NODWE (New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors), which is looking distinctly shabby these days from the daily abuse I subject it to. Otherwise, it has to be Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. It’s a socially conscious literary novel up there with Dickens and Gaskell but more accessible, shot through with humour and grace, and underscores why I’m both self-employed and a proud member of my trade union!

Have you got any advice for aspiring freelancers?

Never, ever approach established freelances out of the blue and ask for information on “agencies, contacts or training”. It’s all out there on the internet and a little time spent on a search engine will dig up a lot of info on training, for starters. I get very cross when aspiring freelances ask me this and expect it to be handed on a plate to them – it tells me they are not prepared to put the work in to get started. And asking for contacts is a no-no – that’s my client list they’re asking for!

Louise Bolotin is a freelance editor based in Manchester. She specialises in editing financial and adult material of all sorts for publishers, companies and individuals. She runs PlainText Editorial (plaintext.co.uk) and her listing on Find a Proofreader is findaproofreader.com/listings/plaintext/.

Hi, Paul! Can you tell us a bit about the nature of your business?

I copy-edit and proofread primarily STM (science, technical, medical) books, journals, posters, and reports for publishers and medical agencies in the UK and overseas. When I started out in publishing in the early 1990s, my work was all done on paper. When I went freelance in the mid-1990s, it was about 40% hard copy:60% on-screen. Now, in the 21st century, it’s about 1% hard copy:99% on-screen. My specific areas of expertise are food science, nutrition, and environmental issues, but I’m confident working in most subject areas of STM publication matter. I’ve also worked on quite a broad range of other subject matter from children’s novels to UN reports.

I pride myself on providing the human touch in my work while also utilizing the best modern tools available to maximize accuracy, efficiency, and, ultimately, high-quality output. For these reasons, several years ago, I invented and co-developed ReferenceChecker (www.goodcitations.com) to automate one of the most arduous and time-consuming tasks in on-screen copy-editing: that of checking references and citations in Word documents. I co-developed ReferenceChecker with a colleague, a professional linguist and computer programmer, over several months, to produce a highly efficient, time-saving, and affordable piece of software that anyone could use with minimal previous knowledge of using add-ins in Word. I have calculated that for the average full-time on-screen editor, ReferenceChecker will save up to 174 hours per year: a saving of almost 5 working weeks!

Tell us about your journey to becoming a freelancer.

After graduating from Oxford-Brookes University in 1992, having cancelled the idea of being a dietitian, and having been keen to start earning, I found work as a full-time in-house science journal production editor for Pergamon Press in Oxford. My work there included many hands-on steps in the production process, from receipt and copy-editing of manuscripts for publication, to supplier liaison, issue compilation, artwork checks, and checks/approvals of the printed copy. Pergamon later became an imprint of Reed-Elsevier, and in 1996 I took the decision to become an independent freelance editor. Helpfully, my old employer was happy to send me work for a good couple of years, helping me to establish my services with other publishers. The business has gone from strength to strength as I’ve built up a steady list of clients and work projects. Occasionally, I’ve worked in-house for a publisher but realized how much more productive I can be from the home office.

What do you enjoy most about running your own business?

In no particular order: being in control of my work and general business operations; choosing the volume and type of work; always knowing I can take time out of the working day/year without needing to seek approval; having a flexible work pattern (albeit usually quite long hours); not having to commute.

What are the downsides to working for yourself, if any, and how do you overcome them?

The biggest downsides are not having the personal and social interactions that one normally has in an office. Also, knowing that the buck stops with me: I take full responsibility for my work and business operations. Finally, I am my own software/hardware support technician! If I have a software/hardware problem with any of the equipment in my office, it’s down to me to get it fixed. Thankfully, the information age helps greatly in solving technical problems.

How do you go about promoting your business/finding clients? 

The business website is the 21st-century “sign outside the shop”. I also have a directory entry in the Society for Editors & Proofreaders’ (SfEP) online members’ directory and several other relevant local/online directory listings and promotional websites (paid and free).

Have any particular developments occurred within your business sector that have affected the way you work or the way in which you are taking your business forward?

Less a development, more a retrograde step: some copy-editors and proofreaders from non-native English-speaking countries, who profess to provide professional English-editing services, are causing problems in the profession, in that not only are they taking work away from highly experienced native English-speaking in-house and freelance copy-editors, but also they are introducing poorly edited (sometimes plain erroneous) text into the public domain. Astonishingly, some highly reputed British publishers have chosen this route to cut costs, and in the case of medical text matter that provides unclear or incorrect information, the implications can be serious.

What is your most treasured work-related possession?

ReferenceChecker. Over the years, it has saved a huge amount of time … and my sanity.

What do you enjoy doing when you’re not working with words?

Long walks, and visiting interesting and beautiful places.

What’s your favourite book?

Strunk & White’s “The Elements of Style”. It’s small size and simplicity belie its importance to anyone who wants to know how to use words effectively.

Have you got any advice for aspiring freelancers?

Consider very carefully your reasons for going freelance.

Get a good accountant.

Network.

Paul Sensecall is a freelance editor and proofreader based in Somerset, UK, and the inventor/co-developer of ReferenceChecker. His website is www.pseditorialservices.com. ReferenceChecker can be downloaded and tried free at www.goodcitations.com.