Citation Matching

Citation matching automatically applies character styles to all reference and object citations in your document. It compares all in-text callouts (references, figures, tables) against your reference list and object captions to ensure every item is correctly linked. Citation Matching automatically identifies the following:

• bibliographic citations without a matching reference entry
• reference entries without citations
• callouts (figure, table, box, section, and appendix) without matching titles or captions.
• section numbers without callouts

If Typefi Orion finds a validation error, it will appear as an author query—inserted as a Word comment.

Preparing to use Citation Matching

To produce accurate results and minimise manual corrections, ensure your document meets the following requirements before running Citation Matching.

1. Manually convert any Word fields (such as cross-references, bookmarks, or automatically generated content) to plain text. Citation Matching can't read text within Word fields, so references and citations must be plain text.

Unlink Word fields to convert to plain text

Select the field, then press Ctrl+Shift+F9 to unlink.

2. Validate your reference list after running SmartReferences to ensure your reference section has a clean structure:

   • each reference contained within a single paragraph (no extra returns)
   • character styles are correctly applied to all reference elements (author, year, title)
   • no empty paragraphs
   • all references are numbered

Formatting tips for numbered citation matching

Here's a few tips for working with numbered style (Vancouver) citations. Check the content inside citation parenthesis or brackets for the following:

• Leading text: Typically, text that immediately precedes citation numbers will cause an issue. These common introductory words are allowed exceptions: e.g., see, ref, refs, and reference.
• Trailing text: After the first number, only text about pages, tables, figures, or an appendix is allowed. If other text is found (for example, non-standard units like 8-12 μm) the number inside the parenthesis or brackets won't be treated as a citation.
• Style consistency: Ensure all citations use a single, consistent numbered style. Tip: Run Citation Conversion and Cleanup before Citation Matching to ensure all citations use a single, consistent numbered style.

Run citation matching

1. Ensure all reference fields and codes have been converted to plain text.
2. Select the Advanced Workflow tool
   
   to open a dropdown (Word → Orion → Edit → Advanced Workflows)
3. Choose Citation Matching. This workflow will check your document against the bibliographic citation style settings configured in Typefi Orion Compass.

Troubleshooting FAQ

Why was a non-citation text tagged?

Sometimes text can resemble citations (for example, an Author-Date like "Harvey 2017" or a number resembling a formula).

Action: Manually remove the applied style (Ctrl + Space).

Why was an in-text citation missed?

The system ignores citations fully integrated into the sentence structure (for example, "Smith, 2025, stated...")

Action: Enclose the entire citation or the year in parentheses () (or [brackets] if nested inside parentheses).

Why was a superscript citation missed?

To prevent incorrectly tagging mathematical notation, the system avoids tagging numbers that follow math symbols, Greek letters, or specific number formats (like 10⁸).

Action: If the missed number is a citation (not math), manually apply the correct style.

Object citation matching

Why does the query say the object citation is incorrectly styled?

Object callouts typically refer to content within the current document. It may display a query about a callout referencing figures or tables in other articles, (for example, "See Figure 1 in Smith (2025)" is being flagged).

Action: Remove the style and delete the associated comment.

Why was a figure or table callout missed?

This happens when it's not clear that there is a link between the in-text callout and the object's caption.

Action: Verify that the object's caption or title is styled with the correct paragraph style (for example, figure caption, table caption).