Matt,

Do you mean statute names (the Name of Act field in Zotero)? That's probably just "title".

Ah. In CSL 1.0, it's "legislation", try that and see if it works.

Bill it is. Very helpful. Thanks to you both.

if it maps to something it is "number", but I'm not sure - the bill number and the docket number both map to "number"
I tried to have the list here
http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/csl_syntax_summary#variables
as complete as possible.
Once you're done with your style, I'll be happy to upload it to the repository for you if you post it somewhere to download.

Not sure how it's implemented in Zotero, but I think a "code number" is technically analogous to a "volume number"; right? E.g. the code is in fact a periodical?

I'm so impressed with how Zotero handles Bluebook, but I have one minor error to point out. When citing a law review article Zotero's output includes two spaces between the volume number the law review title.

It works beautifully. Thanks!

I've noticed that when I cite a journal article in Bluebook, Zotero inserts the Publication field when it should be using Journal Abbr. field for the journal name. Can we fix this?

Or just install it from the repo:

http://www.zotero.org/styles/bluebook_lawrev/dev?install=1

Hi

I was wondering how to handle certain law review and other scholarly citations. The default for the second time you cite an article uses the authors' name

Laurens and Walker, supra note 10

But if Laurens and Walker have written a ton of stuff together, and you cite a lot of it, that convention gets confusing. If you have cited to 5 of theri articles in note 10 you can get

Laurens and Walker, supra note 10; Laurens and Walker, supra note 10; Laurens and Walker, supra note 10;Laurens and Walker, supra note 10;Laurens and Walker, supra note 10


so the Bluebook allows you to substitute a short title for the names:

Social Facts, supra note 1; Social Authority, supra note 10; Social Frameworks, supra note 10; etc

Zotero has a field for short title -- can it be used in this way and how?

thanks

Isis

Frank - not sure I follow what you're saying.

The problem is this -
either we have the "if position="subsequent" without a short title - but then we won't be able to distinguish between different works by same author -
or we have the subsequent citations all with short-titles (against the citation guideline).
I'm not sure how testing for the presence of a short-title, even if possible, would help.

We would actually need to be able to test if the same author(s) are present in another document to get this right- there's nothing even close in csl at the moment as far as I can see. The closest is if disambiguate="true" but that's still quite distinct.

This is, btw. an issue that's not limited to bluebook. MHRA has the same citation rule.

Hi

I just updated to the most recent BB, and I seem to be having a related problem that an earlier user had with periods at the end of cites. When I refresh, I keep getting periods in string cites that don't belong, right before the semi colon.

cite1.; cite2.; cite3.

I take the periods out by hand and they pop up when I refresh. I'm not sure I quite understood the earlier discussion on this, but it seemed to concern inconsistency. I would far rather have resolved this by no punctuation at the end of a cite, and put punctuation in myself at the end of or in between two citations, which isn't affected by refreshing. This worked fine for me in the earlier BB version.

This is my guess as to what is happening. Zotero now gets the punctuation right the first time: For a string cite, then Zotero puts semis, for a single cite then a period. But if you later drag and drop a solo cite into a string cite, the period does not go away, ever, and you have to reinsert the cite instead of dragging and dropping.

Many thanks

Isis

I did not realise that you weren't supposed to drag and drop, since you could in the earlier version of BB, which did not put in the punctuation for you. I personally find it MUCH quicker to drag and drop than having to edit the whole citation.

Also, if I edit the whole citation it appears that I have to put the new citation at the end, which violates BB, unless I start from scratch, which can be a major problem for long string cites.

And forced multiple citation has a really serious problem: I can't put in explanatory parentheticals, which are a major requirement of a lot of BB cites (Cf. in particular) and strongly encouraged elsewhere.(see also cites) Any refreshing will destroy the parenthetical!

thanks for all your help

Isis

Wow, thanks -that editor is amazing. Is it new or did I just miss it? In any case, it also allows me to do my drag and drop, replace the period with a semi within the editor, and the period doesn't come back when I refresh. Thanks!!

no way of tellling without seeing your custom style -
if you go to
gist.github.com
just paste the style in the window and create public gist and post the URL here I can take a look

edit. btw - not a new feature - this has been around since the early 1.0 days at least.

ok the style looks fine as far as I can tell and this seems like a recurring error message in word - could you try what happens if you copy&paste the entire content of your word document into a new one?
More generally, try following the steps here:
http://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_troubleshooting#debugging_broken_documents

@Isis: So with your modified style, you never use author names in subsequent references?

but why not authors? That doesn't seem to make sense. I don't know BB but in all other similar styles the authors are always there.

Hi,

When I cite a statute, I can see only the title and the date, without the Code or Code Number fields. I notice an earlier discussion on this. Is this under construction or am I using the feature wrong?

Thanks!
Isis

Now that I have looked at the BB code, I have some general comments.(I am a very amateur coder, know only what I need for statistical progamming, no csl). I will try to brief but will be happy to expand if helpful.

As I understand it, the core of the style is

<citation>
. . .
<choose>
<if position="ibid">
......
<else-if position="subsequent">
. . . . .
</else-if>
<else>
<text macro="author" suffix=", "/>
<text macro="source" />
<text macro="access" prefix=", "/>
. . . . .
</citation>

I think that the author-source structure is probably great for non BB scholarly styles. The problem is, BB was not developed as a scholarly style, and authorship is often totally unimportant. So BB style now works well for scholarly works but not for legal documents.

I also think it is probably a mistake to try to develop BB too elegantly. It is a very ad hoc (or messy) set of rules. I also agree with the comments to the source macro that most of what is there would be better handled in more specific macros. My best guess
is that the citation code should be something like ( I am skipping over the the details of the ibid and subsequent positions):

<citation>
. . .
<choose>
<if position="ibid">
......
<else-if position="subsequent">
. . . . .
</else-if>
<else>
<if type="article" text macro ="article">
<if type="statute" text macro ="statute">
<if type="case" text macro ="case">

. . . .
</citation>

I'm sure that the details of this are wrong but I hope it conveys the basic idea. Perhaps all the scholarly stuff can be treated in one macro(articles, books, etc) that would have the author-source structure, but I believe that the legal materials should be separated out.

Thanks you

@Isis,

Including the court in all cases sounds right. On a quick trawl, I wasn't able to find the earlier discussion in the thread that you mention, but IIRC cites to the US Supreme Court don't need the court name because it's implied by the name of the reporter. No data loss from leaving it out of the database, should be okay there.

The CSL variable that should catch the court name is "authority", so you can insert it with something like:<choose>
<if type="legal_case">
<text variable="authority"/>
</if>
<choose>It looks like the insertion belongs somewhere around line 162 of the current repository version of the BB style.

Hi

I tried to kluge the omission of the court name by adding them to the date, since they belong in the same parenthetical. For example, in stead of 2009 as a date I say "CA9 2009"

Zotero somehow seems to be extracting the date only?!?! Any and all suggestions on a permanent or temporary fix gratefully accepted

Isis

This may seem like the most idiotic question...however I cannot get zotero to work with Lexis. I pull up a case, attempt to add it to my library cia "add" and choosing the option "case", and Zotero fails to collect any of the pertinent information (case name, court, year, etc.). Am I just missing the ball on this one?

- Overwhelmed 1L