Manage references and sources

Manage references and sources in Microsoft Word — with the four heights of help laid out: do it now, make it easier for the next person to accept, work out the right move when you are stuck, and learn the pattern so it stops coming back.

4prompt heights
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The four heights

The same task, four distances: today's deadline, the next reviewer, the stuck moment, the pattern.

Execute — do the immediate task

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Update the reference list and attached source notes for the contract draft, add the two missing…
Update the reference list and attached source notes for the contract draft, add the two missing journal articles that Priya emailed, ensure each citation uses the firm’s Bluebook variant, then run through the bibliography to fix any author-date mismatches before I submit to Marcus on Friday.

Improve — make it easier to accept

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Before I hand this manuscript to the peer reviewer, make the references easy to check: surface the…
Before I hand this manuscript to the peer reviewer, make the references easy to check: surface the three items that changed since the last draft at the top of the reference section, mark which sources are primary vs secondary, and flag any references that lack page numbers or DOIs so a reviewer won’t get stuck verifying them.

Decide — diagnose the stuck moment

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Marcus asked me to include his two 2023 papers in the literature review, but I’m not sure if he…

I just realized two recent citations Marcus asked for are missing from the reference list

Marcus asked me to include his two 2023 papers in the literature review, but I’m not sure if he meant the conference version or the journal revision. I don’t want to add the wrong entry and cause a reviewer email chain. Which is the likeliest interpretation and what exact next step clears this up with minimal back-and-forth?

Become — change the pattern

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Every submission cycle I lose time chasing inconsistent author names, missing DOIs, and duplicate…

I keep fixing the same citation errors across drafts

Every submission cycle I lose time chasing inconsistent author names, missing DOIs, and duplicate entries across the manuscript and its separate reference file. What habit change or checklist will stop those recurring fixes so I can hand off clean references to reviewers and Marcus without another round of edits?

Next to this one

Other word processor work people do in Microsoft Word.

Every task here came from the work, not from a feature list — which is why the prompts name what you want done and never the button that does it. The tool changes; the work does not.
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The rest of the map

Same library, five ways in.