citaters

Citaters is not a widely used term in standard reference works. The closest established term is citator (plural citators), which in bibliographic and legal contexts refers to a person or tool that tracks how a work is cited by later texts. In law, citators such as Shepard’s and KeyCite help determine the treatment of a case by showing later citing opinions and whether they support or distinguish it. In bibliography, a citator can refer to a tool that records citations to a document and can generate forward or backward citations.

Because citaters is not common, it is often a misspelling or a nonce formation. In informal writing, some use citable or cits as roots, and “citaters” may be coined to describe devices or software that automatically gather quotations and format them into citations, or to refer to fictional beings or groups that rely on quoting as a method of communication.

In speculative or fiction contexts, citaters could be used as the name of a species, organization, or technology, defined by the author within the work. In such uses, the concept is entirely dependent on the author’s world-building and is not a standard term outside that context.

See also: Citator, Citation, Citation management, Quote, Quotation.