Custom MHRA: Force use of short titles/author's name only

noahchamberlain

I am currently working on an undergraduate project and am using MHRA as I have done for years. I'm currently over the word count for a project, owing mainly to the fact that I have a large number of footnotes and works with long titles, which are all counted in the word count.

The solution? I have been told I can use just short titles or the author's name (where there is only one work cited) in the footnotes, so long as there is a corresponding bibliography entry with the long title.

I have limited experience working with CSL. Is this an easy fix? Would anyone know how to implement this? I would appreciate any and all advice. Thanks.

damnation

You'll want to edit the macro called "title-note".
Anywhere where it says <text variable="title".... you'll want to add form="short" to those lines.
That will spit out the short title if there is one available, if not it will give the long title.

General editing steps you need to follow: https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step

noahchamberlain

Thank you so much that's worked very well.

Taking this further, is there a way I can have my footnotes omit the publishing information or wider work information (if it is an article or chapter within a larger publication/book)?

For example, roughly:

This:
Nagy, J. F., ‘The Reproductions of Irish Saints’, Studies in Irish Hagiography:
Saints and Scholars, ed. J. Carey, M. Herbert and P. Ó Riain (Dublin, 2001), pp.
278–88


Might become something like:
Nagy, ‘Reproductions’, pp. 279–81.

damnation

Under "citation" >> "layout" you have a conditional that tests for if it's a subsequent citation and then has an "else".
In that else you want to remove everything and just leave 3 macros: contributors-note, title-note, point-locators.

There is a variety of "short note" citation styles that do just that though. If you're not married to MHRA that is.

noahchamberlain

Thank you very much. That works wonderfully.