So, here I am, tantalizingly close to finishing my PhD thesis. The last few days I have been dealing with the Hell that MS Word becomes when you ask it to deal with formatting a document as complex as a thesis, full of citations, table and figure references, and a bunch of formatting weirdness.

I use Mendeley to manage my references, and I’ve always found it easy to use. However, when making sure my references were formatted exactly as I wanted, I had to dip my toe into CSL and make some tweaks.

So in-case anyone else out there might have use for it, here is my customised citation style:

http://csl.mendeley.com/styles/2561621/italic-et-al-short-title-pub

Example of inline citation:

(Carlsson, 1983; Price et al., 1983)

Example of Bibliography:

Whishaw, I.Q., Gorny, B., Foroud, A. & Kleim, J.A. 2003. Long-Evans and Sprague-Dawley rats have similar skilled reaching success and limb representations in motor cortex but different movements: some cautionary insights into the selection of rat strains for neurobiological motor research. Behavioural brain research, 145, 221–232 Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14529819 [Accessed August 2, 2012].

WHO. 2013. Model Lists of Essential Medicines. World Health Organisation Publications Available at: http://www.who.int/medicines/publications/essentialmedicines/en/ [Accessed September 7, 2014].

Additional features include:

*Disambiguation override – Keeps initials out of inline citations (Mendley does this to distinguish multiples uses of the same citation)

*Alternate Date Options – using the ‘short name’ field, you can add your own non-date descriptor, such as “In Press/Manuscript in Preparation”