1. An article of manufacture for enabling a computer to automatically generate a reference note in an electronic document when directly quoting information from another electronic document comprising: a computer readable medium suitable for encoding a computer program; and one or more computer programs encoded on said medium and configured to cause a computer to perform the steps of: (a) receiving a first user-selected insertion point or replacement area from a first user interface to a destination electronic document; (b) subsequent to receiving said first insertion point, providing a source user interface to a user-selected source electronic document; (c) subsequent to providing said source user interface, receiving a user selection of text content to be transferred from said source user interface to said first insertion point or replacement area; (d) subsequent to receiving said user selection of content, automatically copying said selected content to a transfer buffer without requiring said user to return to said first user interface; (e) automatically capturing and recording one or more source reference data items corresponding to said selected content simultaneously with or subsequent to said automatic copying; and (f) automatically generating in said destination electronic document at least one reference note selected from the group of a footnote, an endnote, a table of references entry, and a bibliographical entry containing said recorded source reference data items.