Scrivener is great and I am almost finished my first book at 60,000 words.
My question is: “What is the proper way for me to cite my sources”? My book is non-fiction and is about a fairly controversial subject. It has a number of outside sources so I want to make ‘triple-sure’ that I do this correctly.
I see that there is an MLA way and several others, and I also understand that there may be a proper way for certain types of manuscripts…
I’d do some searching on the forum for Endnotes, Zotero, and Bookends. There have been a few discussions on the relative merits of each, and how to use them in conjunction with Scrivener.
The reference managers that Amber cites are all excellent for solving the problem of what style of reference to use for various sources: book, book chapter, article, web story, map, etc.
But you may not need something that complex or costly. If you Google the term “reference citation generator”, you will find many free web-based tools that let you enter data and get back a citation for copy/paste in the appropriate format.
Oh, sorry I thought Zotero were free. I meant to include at least one cheaper option. Nevertheless, searching the forum for any of those tools will bring up some good threads.
There are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of formats for citing sources. The usual way to go about things is to find out what style the publisher wants, and to format the citations (and bibliography) in that style. (It is possible that the publisher may have no special preference, and will leave the author to choose one of the more usual formats – like Harvard, MLA, APA, etc.) People use bibliography managers like Endnote, Bookends and Zotero because they permit you to re-format the citations and bibliography very quickly should you need to submit to more than one publisher and they require different styles. It saves an immense amount of work. The Wikipedia article on the basics is OK, and will give you an idea of how to go about things.