Answered By: Karen Crinnion
Last Updated: Mar 27, 2023     Views: 66284

If you wish to exclude your EndNote citations from your word count, you can do this by creating a new style that hides all citations.
 
In EndNote select Tools>Output styles>New style:

Screenshot of EndNote 20 showing where to add a new style

To give the illusion of removing all of your in-text citation and bibliography references from your essay, so that you can obtain a word count without them, you need to create a blank EndNote Output style.

In the New Style window select File>Save as and give the blank style a name, e.g. "word count style" or "blank style":

Screenshot of EndNote 20 highlighting how to save a new style output

Then save it in your EndNote styles folder in your H drive, (if you do not have a Styles folder in your EndNote folder on your H drive, we recommend you create one in order to keep all of your EndNote materials together). If the new style does not automatically save to your H: drive then you will need to find it in your documents/downloads and move to your styles folder in your H: drive.

You then need to find your newly created blank referencing style, and choose this newly created output style in EndNote, then also in Microsoft Word (see attached FAQ for how to find new styles).

As it is a blank style it will remove all citations so that you can then do your word count:

Screenshot of Word showing what a Word doc looks like with the Blank style looks like.

We have attached an example of this called 'Word_count_style.ens', which you can use, simply download and save to the EndNote Styles folder in your H drive.

Note: if you do not see your amended style in the list you may need to check that your style folder is set to locate your personal file space (H drive).

To do this: In your EndNote library Select Edit > Preferences > then in the grey box select Folder locations and your Style folder should be: H:\EndNote\Styles 

Comments (3)

  1. Brilliant tip! saved my life in getting word count spot on for submitting a publication!
    by Calo on Nov 18, 2017
  2. Hi
    If a word doc using this style is downloaded and read by others, will their word count show the total amount, or the amount excluding the references? I'm asking from a marker's perspective, as I want to be fair in the application of word limits to all students.
    Thanks
    by Jo on Apr 11, 2018
  3. Hi Jo, you will see the formatted version (with the correct style - whatever that is) when it's submitted (which will include the citations) so you'll see the word count that includes them. The style is a tool for the writer to do a word count without citations included. Of course if you have EndNote yourself you can view the document with the style and exclude the citations. I hope this helps to explain it.
    by Karen Crinnion on Apr 11, 2018