The best way to see if you like a program well enough to buy it (and work with it on a daily basis) is to take it for a "spin" - see what it looks like, and how it feels to work with it. After you've downloaded the Citation Trial version, these short exercises will make it easy for you to get the gist of how Citation works and how it looks.

The thing to remember about Citation is that it is a very straightforward, "workhorse" kind of program - it is meant to sit quietly on your word processor's Tools menu, storing your notes and writing your bibliographies.

So don't expect any engine roars. It should just coast along with a few clicks here and there.

Sometimes instructions for using a software program - however easy the program is to learn - rely on "funny words" to tell you what you need to know. Database programs are notorious for having a specialized set of these curious terms: database, for one - record, form, and field for a few others.

If you've never heard these words before - not to worry. We've written the world's shortest dictionary for you to disambiguate (!) these four terms.

Before we start running through the most basic uses of Citation, we want to make sure that it has installed properly on your system. It's simple to check this.

Just start your word processor, and click on the Tools menu. If you see an entry for Citation on your tools menu, Citation is properly installed, and you're ready to begin the "test drive."

Leave your word processor open, with a blank document on the screen.

With our animated demos, you can watch Citation create footnotes and write bibliographies!

Write a Bibliography
Generate Reference List

The first feature we're going to try out in Citation is the one that lets you write a bibliography for the "records" in your "database." Not surprisingly, this feature is called Generate Bibliography.

Here's what you do to try out the Bibliography feature:

1. On your word processors menu, click Tools, Citation (see the illustration above).

2. On the Citation menu, click File, Open, and open c:\citation\samples\bib.cit.

On the Citation menu, click Generate, Bibliography. A dialog will display asking you to set the style for the Bibliography.

Set the option on the dialog to write the Bibliography in MLA style, and click OK. Citation will write a bibliography to the blank document in your word processor.

Easy, eh?

Next we'll see how easy it is to create a footnote for a short paper. Before you go on, close the document with the bibliography that we just wrote, and open another blank document.

1. In your word processor, close the document we just created (no need to save it), and then open c:\citation\samples\essay.rtf. (Notice the author names & years between the curly braces that look like this: {Smith 1980: 223} -- these are "keys" that tell Citation which records are being cited in the paper.)
2. On the Citation menu, close bib.cit, and then open c:\citation\samples\tutor.cit.
3. On the Citation menu, click Generate, Citations for document. A dialog will display, asking you to select the style for the intext citations and the reference list.
4. Set the options in the dialog to write the intext citations in Short Form, APA style, and the Reference List in APA 5th ed. style.
5. Click OK.

Citation will make a copy of essay.rtf, and then scan it for "citation keys" matching records in the datafile tutor.cit. When it finds the records cited, it writes the references!

If you like, you can rewrite the citations in another style, by just going back to the document with the keys, and rerunning Generate Citations with the dialog set to another Publishing style.

It's almost fun, isn't it. Well. Almost. Better than doing it by hand, though.

Ready to start working with your own materials? Great! Gather up the books and articles you've read recently - and use our EasyGuide. The EasyGuide is a series of three short lessons that will walk you through creating your own database, entering your first records, working with notes - and writing reference lists.

Lesson 1: Creating a datafile and adding your first records
Lesson 2: Working with research notes
Lesson 3: Citing sources in papers