Problems with In-Text Citation and Et al

babrevian

Hi,
I hope someone can help me. I am panel beating a citation style to my needs. I am making use of Visual CSL Editor and so far I have been quite successful. The only thing that eludes me is finding the correct settings for the in-text et al citations.

The first in-text citation must have all authors names. The subsequent citations must have the first name and et al. I manage most of it, but the et al disappears on subsequent citations. Here is an example:

(Ryken, Wilhoit & Longman, 1998b:200)
(Ryken, 1998b:200)

The second citation needs to be (Ryken et al., 1998b:200). The et al should also be italics.

I tried to add the code from my CSL, but it appears as if it is too long. I hope someone can help

babrevian

OK, I managed to paste the code, but it is quite a mess. Hopefully someone can make sense of it.

[code removed — D.S.]

adamsmith

could you post the style to pastebin.com and provide a URL here? The forum isn't a good place to post/look at code.
This should be easy to fix, though.

babrevian

Thanks. I am a bit confused. When I tried pasting it into pastebin.com it appears just as jumbled. Is there a special trick to copying and pasting the code so it appears a bit more structured?

babrevian

Here is my attempt: http://pastebin.com/Jt7NwseD

adamsmith

where are you copying this from? Go to the "code editor" window in the visual editor, click on the lower hand of the screen where the actual code is. Then select all - only the code should be highlighted - and copy - that works for me.

babrevian

Thanks. I copied it from Firefox (after I installed the CSL it opens a page in Firefox). I copied it from the Visual Editor. It appears as if it worked.

http://pastebin.com/Xm3wiFQb

adamsmith

For the first issue: Change the citation part to this:

<citation name-form="count" and="symbol" delimiter-precedes-et-al="always" delimiter-precedes-last="always" et-al-min="6" et-al-use-first="1" et-al-subsequent-min="3" et-al-subsequent-use-first="1" initialize-with=". " name-as-sort-order="all" names-delimiter=", *" disambiguate-add-names="true" disambiguate-add-givenname="true" disambiguate-add-year-suffix="true">

Note the et-al settings: This means: "On the first citation, use et al only if there are 6 authors or more and then print one name before et al; on subsequent citations use et al if there are 3 authors or more and print one name before et al" You can change the numbers accordingly - note that the et-al-min should always be larger (typically 2 larger) than the corresponding et-al-use-first

You also want to change the bibliography part to something like this:
<bibliography et-al-min="8" et-al-use-first="6" hanging-indent="true">
the "subsequent" doesn't make sense there & shouldn't be in it, also same thing with et-al-min needing to be larger than et-al-use-first. Again, you can adjust the numbers according to your needs.

(all of this you can easily do in the visual editor)

For the et al in italics, change the author-short macro to:
<macro name="author-short">
<names variable="author" suffix=", ">
<name form="short" and="symbol" delimiter-precedes-last="never" initialize="false" sort-separator=""/>
<et-al font-style="italic"/>
<substitute>
<names variable="editor"/>
<names variable="translator"/>
<text macro="anon"/>
</substitute>
</names>
</macro>

Note the <et-al font-style="italic"/> - this may not work well in the visual editor, which, IIRC, puts this in the wrong place. It needs to come right after the first <name...> line, before <substitute>

babrevian

Thank you. I will give this a try!

babrevian

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have been struggling with this for so long (mostly because I wanted to learn more about CSL), but this had me stumped. Your advice worked beautifully.

fbennett

Here are a few small things to fix.

First, at line 35, find this:
<label form="short" text-case="lowercase"
strip-periods="true" prefix=" (" suffix=".)"/>
and change it to this:
<text form="short" term="editor" text-case="lowercase"
strip-periods="true" prefix=" (" suffix=".)"/>

Second, at line 120, find this:
<label plural="never" strip-periods="false" form="symbol"/>
and change it to this:
<label plural="never" variable="locator" strip-periods="false" form="symbol"/>

The style will now be valid, but the the et-al settings need a little adjustment. At line 112 find this:
<citation name-form="count" and="symbol"
delimiter-precedes-et-al="always" delimiter-precedes-last="always"
et-al-min="3" et-al-use-first="10"
et-al-subsequent-min="1" et-al-subsequent-use-first="1"
initialize-with=". " name-as-sort-order="all"
names-delimiter=", *"
disambiguate-add-names="true" disambiguate-add-givenname="true"
disambiguate-add-year-suffix="true">
Change et-al-min and et-al-use-first values to a sane value (et-al-use-first should be less than et-al-min):
et-al-min="3" et-al-use-first="10"

Then for et-al-subsequent-min and et-al-subsequent-use-first change the former from "1" to "2":
et-al-subsequent-min="2" et-al-subsequent-use-first="1"
You can blame me (as author of the citation processor) for this last change: if the subsequent-min use-first and values are both set to "1", the et-al term is suppressed. Values of "2" and "1" will have the same effect (rendering a maximum of one name), but with the et-al term included.

fbennett

The first two problems were turned up by the online validator, which you will probably want to use to check further changes. It is here:

http://simonster.github.io/csl-validator.js/

babrevian

Thanks. I will follow your advice. I must admit the learning curve is quite steep, but the Visual Editor helps a lot :-D

babrevian

I completed your advice. Only one thing: at line 120 I cannot add variable="locator" since the citation format I must use do not allow p. to be part of the in-text citation. It must be (name, 1990:233).

Not sure how to fix this since I used another Citation Style as basis.

Otherwise, everything appears ok.

adamsmith

just delete
<label plural="never" strip-periods="false" form="symbol"/>

Alexandra Suasnavas

Hello everyone! there is any easy way without too much programming to use the citation "et al" when I have more than two authors? I can't use it in my citations.... Zotero put all the authors last names....
Thank you if someone can help me!!

adamsmith

the easiest would be to use a citation style that does. Which one are you using? And are you referring to in-text citations or the bibliography?

Alexandra Suasnavas

I am using American Psicological Association 6th edition and Im refrring to in-text citations... Thank you very much for your answer

adamsmith

Right, APA is one of the few styles that lists more than 3 authors in text. You can use pretty much every other author-date style and get what you want.

bwiernik

Here is a link to a version of the APA CSL style that uses "et al" immediately after two authors:

https://gist.github.com/bwiernik/0e4d14021f2a2f10cc8c4ff70f5d2664