The way it works is this. Suppose you read an article in a book that you want to recall later, either for reasons of its content or to make reference to it. You key the details into the framework supplied (or you can construct your own) with headings such as Author, Title of article, Title of book, Editor of book, Publisher, date, pagination &c &c: and there are also spaces for Keywords, Abstract, Notes &c if you want to make use of them. You can set up a number of styles appropriate to different kinds of source (journal article, book, paper in book, magazine article, thesis, computer program, map, &c) and edit these freely.
You can export any item in your index into a document you're writing, and can choose or create whatever citation style you want. Thus the same item will give you any of the following, or any other variant you choose.
Once you have typed a reference into EndNote Plus, you need never type it again! You can always access it and put it into any document you are working on. This has clear advantages for preventing inconsistencies and future transcription errors.
Hoskin [1994]
Hoskin [1]
Hoskin, 1994. Paradigm vol 13, pp. 11-41
Hoskin, Keith, Textbooks and the mathematisation of American reality, Paradigm 13 (1994), 11-41
Since you can record any text in any box, with any label you want to give it such as Abstract, Notes, Quotes, &c, the system is extraordinarily versatile and able to meet a variety of needs: from short abstracts (such as appear in the BSHM Newsletter's abstract section), to any notes you make, or any passages you may want to quote verbatim. In short, it behaves just like a set of card-files, with the advantage of being able to insert any details, in any style, into any document.