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Cite in notes

Cite a reference straight from a note and you drop an inline citation chip into the text that stays tied to the reference record. The chip carries the reference's id, so it always knows which work it points to; clicking it jumps to that reference in the References module — and the reference's panel shows the notes that cite it, closing the loop in both directions. This page shows how to insert a citation, how the chip behaves, how citations are formatted, and how to generate a bibliography.

Insert a citation

Citations come from the note editor's insertion menus: type / and pick "Cite reference", or use the + insert menu — both open the same citation picker above your text.

  1. 1In the open note, type / (or open the + insert menu) and choose Cite reference.
  2. 2Type in the search field to filter your references by title, author or year.
  3. 3Use the arrow keys to move through the results and Enter to insert, or click the reference you want.
  4. 4The citation chip is inserted at the cursor, showing the in-text label in your current citation style.
  5. 5Press Esc to close the picker without inserting.
The citation picker opens as a small overlay above your text and searches as you type — the same popover pattern the notes use for links between notes ([[).
The picker lists the references already in your library. To cite a work you haven't saved yet, add it first — see the "Add references" page.

The note-to-reference link

The chip is an inline element that stores the reference's id (not a copy of its data), so the citation stays bound to that exact record. Its label is resolved live from the reference and from your chosen citation style: fix the authors or year later, or switch styles, and every chip updates on its own — ABNT shows (SILVA, 2020) where APA shows (Silva, 2020).

Clicking a citation chip opens that reference in the References module, where the row is located and briefly highlighted — so you jump from the citation in your text to the full record: authors, journal, DOI, abstract and the rest.

If a chip shows a placeholder instead of the label, the reference it points to is no longer in your library (deleted or not yet loaded). Restoring the reference from the module's Trash — or re-adding it — brings the label back.

Citation label and format

The chip shows a short in-text label in author-date form: a single author becomes (Silva, 2020), two authors (Silva & Souza, 2020), and three or more (Silva et al., 2020). ABNT and ISO 690 print the surnames in capitals. When there's no author, the first words of the title stand in; when there's no year, a no-date marker takes its place (n.d. in APA, s.d. in ABNT).

The full, styled citation lives on the reference itself. Open a reference to see its Citation panel: switch between ABNT, APA 7th ed., Vancouver, MLA 9th ed., Chicago (author-date), Harvard, IEEE and ISO 690, with the style's required italics visible in the preview. Copy citation puts the entry on the clipboard as rich text — the italics survive pasting into Word or Google Docs — and Copy in-text citation copies just the short (Author, year) form. In the module's list, Ctrl+Shift+C copies the formatted citation of the selected row.

The style you pick is remembered on this device and shared between the citation panel, the chips and the bibliography. The default follows the app language: ABNT in Portuguese, APA otherwise.

Generate a bibliography

To turn the citations spread through a note into a formatted list at the end, type / and choose Bibliography: it scans every citation chip in the note, lets you pick the style, and appends a heading plus one entry per cited reference — with real italics in the text. Author-date styles sort the entries alphabetically; Vancouver and IEEE keep the order in which you cited and number the entries [1], [2], …

If the note has no citation chips yet, the bibliography dialog says so and points you to "/ Cite reference" first.

Cited in notes — the way back

The link works in both directions: a reference's info panel has a "Cited in notes" section listing the notes that cite it. Click a note to open it in the Notes module — handy for finding every place you used a source before editing or removing it.

Encrypted notes can't be scanned for citations — their content is ciphered — so they don't appear in "Cited in notes".