The standardisation of bibliographies is the writers' and editors' nightmare, and the only solution to date has been hard graft and heartache, in traditional typesetting and in word-processing, the computer has given little help, leaving the onus on the user to ensure that all conventions are being followed. There are three problems with this practice of composing bibliographies directly in the medium for which they are targeted (from a typewriter with underlining up to a professional typesetter) firstly, it is difficult to be consistent about citations, particularly in a work where there are contributions from many authors, secondly, a bibliography laid out in one style is extremely hard to convert to another (from, say. Harvard-style references to footnotes) if requested by a publisher, thirdly, it is difficult to maintain a common set of references which can be used in different document styles. This paper examines three solutions to the citation problem Firstly, there is the sophisticated word-processor package Nota Bene, which has facilities for tagging bits of text as bibliographical references, associated with particular places in the text, for defining style sheets (which could be applied to the bibliography) and for textual databases for citation collections Secondly, we examine the Unix solution of a set of tools for manipulating reference databases (refer, lookbtb and pubindex), and their integration into typesetting with troff Lastly, we look at the integrated system available in a TEX environment, using the LATEX macros and the separate BIBTEX program. Both the Unix and the BIBTEX systems hold citations in an abstract format separately from the text, linking the two by common keys, and it is argued that this 'relational database' approach provides the only viable long-term solution for 'technical' writing. Examples are given of radically different bibliographies generated from the same source by the application of different citation style files. The separation of the function of references from their visual appearance enables the document to be used in a wider variety of ways, and gives a greater freedom to a publication designer. © 1987 Oxford University Press.