x” information about my source is not available, but BibMe requires me to enter it. Why is that and is there a solution?
There are many reasons for this. First of all, if at least one of the formatting styles requires a certain piece of information, BibMe makes it mandatory, in order for you to switch between formatting styles at will and still maintain a complete, error-free citation. But more significantly, many of the style guides do not give comprehensive explanations as to what information is required, what is optional, and what is unnecessary. Many of the guidelines given for citations are open-ended. In some cases, only sample citations are given in the manuals, forcing us to interpret the guidelines ourselves. When in doubt, we err on the side of caution and make a piece of information mandatory. This is to ensure that our interpretation of the formatting guidelines does not interfere with you getting a reliable, correct citation. If BibMe is forcing you to enter information that is not available to you, enter in “dummy data” and remove it from your bibliography after you download it into an .rtf
