Chicago Manual of Style (author-data and note): Web Page dates

Chicago Manual of Style (author-data) prints the publication year only, no access date.

Chicago Manual of Style (note) prints the full publication date, but no access date.

None of them prints "last modified" or "accessed" as suggested by the Manual.
  • I'm pretty sure the manual (16th ed) suggests _not_ including access dates. I don't have time to search for the relevant passage right now, but if you find something to the contrary we can review the styles.
  • In any case, a full date should be printed, not just a year.

    CMoS, 16th ed., 14.245 has "last modified", "accessed", and both:

    ​14. “WD2000: Visual Basic Macro to Assign Clipboard Text to a String
    Variable,” revision 1.3, Microsoft Help and Support, last modified
    November 23, 2006, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/212730.

    ​15. “Google Privacy Policy,” last modified October 14, 2005, accessed
    July 19, 2008, http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html.

    ​16. “McDonald’s Happy Meal Toy Safety Facts,” McDonald’s Corporation,
    accessed July 19, 2008,
    http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html.

    ​17. Barack Obama’s Facebook page, accessed July 19, 2008,
    http://www.facebook.com/barackobama.

    ​18. “Style Guide,” Wikipedia, last modified July 18, 2008,
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Style_guide.

    Microsoft Corporation. “WD2000: Visual Basic Macro to Assign Clipboard
    Text to a String Variable.” Revision 1.3. Microsoft Help and Support.
    Last modified November 23, 2006. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/212730.
  • For access dates, see 14.7: "Chicago does not therefore require access dates in its published citations of electronic sources unless no date of publication or revision can be determined from the source (see 14.8)."

    I believe we do substitute in the access date where there is no publication date.
  • Zotero does create the citations exactly as above - it always uses accessed and note modified, but I don't see a way around that.
  • My first point was that in the author-date style the month and day parts of "Date" are not printed. So could this please be fixed?

    "Accessed" date - yes, that gets printed in both styles when there is no "Date", and it does include month and day.

    My other point was that you might be forced to, or simply want to include an accessed date statement. I see that the Chicago Manual, in 14.7, _does_ mention this very possibility. So how could I achieve that?

    Come to think of it, a web page might have three relevant dates, published, modified, and accessed. So it might not be clear whether "Date" means published or modified, so unless it can be specified which one it is it might not be practical to print "last modified".

    Anyway, I'd be happy if the Chicago styles could be made to print _both_ "Date" and "Accessed" if both happen to appear in my data.
  • My first point was that in the author-date style the month and day parts of "Date" are not printed. So could this please be fixed?
    could you give an example for a citation? I don't think I follow.

    We're not going to change the Chicago style on the repository WRT access dates - by default, Zotero will include access dates for a lot of items and as I say CMoS recommends to not print them in most cases, but you can customize your copy of the style if you want:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
  • Take any "Web Page" with a date like "2013-01-21". All you get in the output is "2013".
  • edited January 21, 2013
    CMoS (15.51) wants this for the author-date version:

    Evanston Public Library Board of Trustees. 2008. “Evanston Public Library Strategic Plan, 2000–2010: A Decade of Outreach.” Evanston Public Library. Accessed July 19. http://www.epl.org/library/strategic-plan-00.html.

    (Evanston Public Library 2008)

    That is exactly what I get using Zotero, you don't?

    (I'd really appreciate if you'd look up & quote the relevant CMoS sections for any further inquiries, bug reports - it doesn't take me any less time than you to look them up).
  • What you show is an entry with an access date.

    What I'm talking about is a "Web Page" with a "Date", like "2013-01-21", and the output is just "2013".

    All the examples concerning websites I can find in the CMoS have month and day.
  • All the examples concerning websites
    which examples specifically?
  • Ten dates appear in 14.425, four of these are "accessed", four are "last modified" (at least these are "Date" and not "Accessed") - and of these ten, every single one has month and day.

    Same thing, btw, for blog posts and e-mails - month and day aren't printed by chicago-author-year - but they should. In 14.426, there's even one example with a time stamp.

    And again, chicago-notes does print month and day of "Date", at least for "Web Page", "E-Mail", and "Blog Post", and I see no reason why chicago-author-year shouldn't do the same.
  • right, I didn't think of blog posts, we'd definitely won't the full date for those, so I put it in:
    The style is now fixed. The updated version will appear on the repository within 30mins (check the timestamp). Update your copy of the style by re-installing it from the repository. (See here if you need instructions for installing styles in standalone.)
    Any further problems please let us know.
  • The current version of chicago-author-year apparently no longer prints full dates (i.e., including month and day), neither for web pages nor for blogs. Could this please be fixed?
  • The style is now fixed. The updated version will appear on the repository within 30mins (check the timestamp). Update your copy of the style by clicking "Update Now" in the General tab of the Zotero preferences.

    Styles also update automatically within 24hs for Zotero 4.0+
    In an existing document, you may have to switch to a different style and back for the changes to take effect once the style is updated.
    Any further problems please let us know & thanks for reporting
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