Oh the references!

So I have been very annoyed over the past few weeks ever since I installed the newest version of Office on my Mac machine. I had spent about $50 on the newest version of Endnote to manage my citations last year and had collected a nice list of references that I use on a semi-regular basis. The best part was how well integrated it was with Office. Once I opened up Word, all I had to do was open up Endnote and a nice icon would pop up so I could cite a source while I wrote. The newest version of Word, however, did not support this integration and I was saddened because I did not want to go back to the older Word that did not work as well with the newest Mac hardware.

Fast forward to last week, and I finally found a new feature in Word, their own version of a citation manager. So far, it seems to work just as well, though I rue the deeper attachment this will form between me to Microsoft. With every reference I add in this new library, it will make changing to a future, better word processor all the more difficult. Apple's word processor, Pages, has a pitiful solution to the citations issue, as it mearly will add a pre-formated "works cited" section and not embed the reference into the article.

Finally, for any PA voters out there, please go out and vote! I am too anxious to wait for the results!