Citing Sources in a Non-Fiction Book Using Footnotes or Endnotes

Citing sources consistently across a long non-fiction manuscript is easier when every citation goes through Deckle's footnote/endnote tool, in the same place, rather than being typed inline as ad-hoc parenthetical text.

What You'll Need

• A non-fiction manuscript in Deckle with sources you need to credit.

Step-by-Step

1. Insert a footnote/endnote at the exact point you're citing, rather than adding a parenthetical reference inline. This keeps your body text clean and the citation itself easy to find and edit later.
2. Write your citation with real formatting where it helps, such as italicizing a book or publication title or linking to an online source, since note content supports the same rich text as the rest of your manuscript.
3. Decide between Footnotes and Endnotes for the whole book (Styles → Special Pages → Notes) based on how your readers will use them: footnotes keep the source visible on the same page (or a same-file popup in EPUB), endnotes keep the body text uninterrupted and collect every citation onto one page at the end.
4. Or let Deckle format them for you. Turn on Styler ▸ Special pages ▸ Citations and pick a style: APA 7th, MLA 9th, Chicago 18th (notes and bibliography, or author-date), Harvard (Cite Them Right), IEEE, Vancouver (NLM), AMA 11th, or your own .csl file. The editor toolbar then gets a citation button. Enter each source once, or import a .bib or .ris file from Zotero, Mendeley or EndNote, and every citation follows the chosen style, with a References or Works Cited page built from the sources you actually cite. Chicago notes and bibliography puts its citations into your footnotes or endnotes.
5. Switch styles freely while drafting. Since Footnote vs. Endnote is one global setting, you can draft with one and switch to the other later without touching a single note.

Common Mistakes

• Typing citations inline as parenthetical text instead of using the footnote/endnote tool. This makes them harder to reformat consistently later, and defeats the point of Endnote style's dedicated backmatter page.
• Mixing citation formats from note to note. If you type citations into notes by hand, Deckle does not standardise them. Either use the Citations setting, which formats every citation in one style, or pick a style up front and apply it the same way in every note.
• Assuming Endnotes hides citations from readers who want them close at hand. Each endnote still links back to exactly where it was referenced, so readers who want to check a source can jump there directly, even though it isn't on the same page.