Making your own citation style

JonEP

Hi,

I've been looking into the possibility of modifying a citation style to fit my needs, but frankly the technical knowledge needed to do this just seems incredibly daunting. I've been checking out the instructions at http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/creating_citation_styles.

I've also checked out: http://www.zotero.org/support/csl_simple_edits

Here's my situation:

I'm currently using the American Journal of Archeology (author-date) (dev) style for my dissertation. I like it because it allows author-date citations to be inserted without parentheses. However, it does not handle newspaper articles well -- a sample newspaper entry, one which has no author, appears as:

Anon 2005 (December 17,)

I'd like it to appear as:

“Newspapers are here to stay,” New York Times, December 17, 2005.

There are other small things about it I'd like to change.

I'd thought about trying to find another style, but none really meets my needs. The Chicago Manual of Style (Dated Note with Bibliography, no ibid) (dev) produces the following reference for that entry:

2006.


The Chicago Manual of Style (Author-Date Format) gives:

(Anon, 2006)

The Chicago Manual of Style (Note with Bib) style gives:

"Newspapers are here to stay"

which is alright, but then it is not an author - date format so it inserts almost full footnote citations for each reference, which I don't want.

That is, I've basically hunted and pecked for a style that meets all of my needs, and can't find one. After looking into the possibility of making modifications, I find I am quite frustrated -- I don't think I am up to the task of learning XML and how to validate code in the middle of writing my thesis. Any ideas? Is any progress being made on interactive tools for the layperson?

Thanks.

adamsmith

No one knows exactl details about the status of the interactive tool, which is being developed by Mendeley. Here's the status quo
http://csleditor.quist.de/csleditor/show/1/example-citation-style

Essentially you have two choices: You can request a style, but styles that follow "this is want my dissertation to look" guidelines (while perfectly understandable!) are at the bottom of my pile, which is unfortunately high atm.

Alternatively you can just ask specific questions and we'll walk you through issues in csl modification while you learn.
For your issue, have a look at the APSA style's author-short macro:

<macro name="author-short">
<names variable="author">
<name form="short" and="text" delimiter=", " initialize-with=". " sort-separator=", "/>
<substitute>
<names variable="editor"/>
<names variable="translator"/>
<text macro="title"/>
</substitute>
</names>
</macro>

This will print the short form if the author and if there is no author, the editor, if there's no editor the translator and if there isn't one either the title. (This is identical in csl 1.0 and csl 0.8)

JonEP

Thanks for the reply. So, am looking at the style I'm using, and see the following:

<macro name="anon">
<choose>
<if variable="author editor translator" match="none">
<text term="anonymous" form="short" text-case="capitalize-first"/>
</if>
</choose>
</macro <macro name="anon">
<choose>
<if variable="author editor translator" match="none">
<text term="anonymous" form="short" text-case="capitalize-first"/>
</if>
</choose>
</macro


I think I need to somehow sub in the author-short macro, more or less, to produce the appropriate (to my taste) output... Now going to try it.

adamsmith

(use the text mode if your quoting xml or use <code> </code> tags).
I'd suggest just taking that macro out - make sure you do that everywhere it comes up, else your style will crash (though I think the preview panel in 2.1.1 actually gives a helpful error message on this).
Then add the <susbstitute> element on all author macros where it's relevant, just before the names end tag </names> (note the plural)

JonEP

OK, so subbing in

<text macro="title"/>


for

<text term="anonymous" form="short" text-case="capitalize-first"/>


Produced the appropriate result for the author, in the footnote. Unfortunately, it also meant that the bibliography entry has the name of the article twice... This will require a bit of work! Also need to figure out how to get the date field out of the footnote.

Anyway, thanks for the help!

JonEP

Note - comments crossed in the mail. Didn't see Adam's before posting.

adamsmith

yeah - as I say cross -out the macro, use the substitute command.

JonEP

OK, thanks. Well, doing that made it work, but figuring out how to get it all into proper bibliographic form later (ie., getting the date right, using authors's names to alphabetize when there is an author and otherwise using the title of the newspaper article, etc). is going to be too much for me -- way too much temptation to just work on this all the time rather than writing the diss.

So will do a fix for now where I give "FOLLOW UP" as the name of the author and fix it all by hand after removing codes, prior to hitting "print" on the thesis.

Thanks.