Reference management software: Zotero 7

Open your Zotero library, then open the Zotero tab in your word processor. Place the cursor where you would like to add an in-text citation and click Add/Edit Citation. Next, choose your preferred citation style (you can change this later on). In the red dialog box that comes up (see right), search for the source that you want to cite and click Enter. If you would rather browse a list of all your references in Zotero, click on the Z button and choose Classic View. Mark the reference you would like to add and click OK.

You can add or remove information in the citations by using the citation dialog. This dialog box opens when you click Add/Edit Citation. You can also place the cursor in one of the citations you created earlier, and then click Add/Edit Citation in order to edit it.

Open the citation dialog box and click on the reference that you wish to edit. Among the alternatives showing up, Page is preselected. In this space, you can enter a page number (e.g. "1") or a page range (e.g. "1-5"). If you click on Page, you can also choose other categories of information, such as table, footnote, or volume.

Do not enter "p." for "page" and similar, since the reference styles will add such information automatically. However, "f." and "ff." for "following" must be entered manually.

In order to add several items in the same citation, simply enter the items one after the other in the citation dialog box.

Note that some reference styles sort the items automatically, for example in chronological order. To preserve the order in which you added the items, click the arrow next to the Z in the citation dialog (see right) and untick the checkbox Keep sources sorted. You can also change the order between the items by manually clicking and dragging them into the desired place in the dialog box.

Most reference styles include the author's name in the citations. If, however, the author is mentioned in the text preceding a reference to the same author, it is usually desirable to avoid repetition of the name (e.g., "Smith (Smith 2021) argues that..."). To do this, tick the Suppress author box in the citation dialog box. Zotero then excludes the author's name in the citation (e.g., "Smith (2021) argues that...").

In the Prefix field in the citation dialog box, you can enter text that is supposed to precede the source itself (e.g., "cf." in "cf. Smith 2021"). Text intended to follow the source can be entered in the Suffix field (e.g., "for a different argument" in "see Smith 2021 for a different argument").

The text entered in the field can be formatted using html tags, e.g., <i> for italics, <b> for bold, and <sub> for subscript. Thus, to italicise "cf.", write "<i>cf.</i>".

Prefixes and suffixes are best used when working with shorter citations in parentheses, e.g., "(Cf. Smith 2021; see also Doe 2020)". When working with more elaborate footnotes, including longer discussions, it is probably easier to write the text in the document itself. See Working with footnotes.