Upgrade StorageMLZ RDF/ODF -- Cancel Final Punctuation
I use a lot of content footnotes. What we need is a way simply to cancel final punctuation at will. How about something like a hash inserted at the end of the locator?
{ | Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, (1989) |126 | |zu:1234567:K3EFRA55-}
means, please follow "-}" with nothing.
{ | Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, (1989) |126 | |zu:1234567:K3EFRA55-}
means, please follow "-}" with nothing.
Alternatively, you could modify the citation style for your project to remove its terminal period completely. You could then write the text and punctuation around your citations directly in the document using the word processor.
Here is one:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/1956/
This is for long footnotes that you don't compose with Zotero entirely, but rather create in the word processor (and then insert citations into via Zotero).
12. For example, Pitt Morse's Herald of Salvation; Finney, Memoirs: Complete Restored Text, 33n24, 35n30., Warren Skinner's Watchman and Repository Ibid., 110n7., Whittemore's Trumpet and Universalist Magazine Ibid., 277–78, esp. 277n51.; cf. Henry Ware, Jr.'s Christian Register (Unitarian) Ibid., 189n89 esp. 277n51. On the rapid growth of the Universalist press, see Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 126.
We need to eliminate commas after periods, periods before semicolons, etc. I had the wild-eyed notion that if I could cancel final punctuation then I could pick comma, period, or semicolon to match the way that I--el hombre--want to write the sentence, but still have it all set up in Scrivener with RTF/ODF codes.
IF suffix field <NOT> empty
THEN cancel final punctuation.
Where would that code need to go?
Could users have a checkbox:
Omit final punctuation if suffix field not empty? Y/N
For example, Pitt Morse's Herald of Salvation; { | Finney, et al., The Memoirs of Charles G. Finney: The Complete Restored Text, (1989) |33n24, 35n30 | |zu:1297786:TVA7VIWF}, Warren Skinner's Watchman and Repository { | Finney, et al., The Memoirs of Charles G. Finney: The Complete Restored Text, (1989) | 110n7| |zu:1297786:TVA7VIWF}, Whittemore's Trumpet and Universalist Magazine { | Finney, et al., The Memoirs of Charles G. Finney: The Complete Restored Text, (1989) | 277-278 |, esp. 277n51|zu:1297786:TVA7VIWF}; cf. Henry Ware, Jr.'s Christian Register (Unitarian) { | Finney, et al., The Memoirs of Charles G. Finney: The Complete Restored Text, (1989) | 189 | esp. 189n89 | zu:1297786:TVA7VIWF} On the rapid growth of the Universalist press, see { | Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, (1989) |126 | |zu:1297786:K3EFRA55}
Your raw text sometimes puts text inside the braces (and so under Zotero control), and sometimes outside (so controlled by the word processor). Zotero can't respond to what's outside the braces (so to get this text layout rendering smoothly, a "suppress terminal punctuation" toggle would indeed be required).
What happens if you write it like this, though:
{ For example, Pitt Morse's Herald of Salvation; | Finney, et al., The Memoirs of Charles G. Finney: The Complete Restored Text, (1989) |33n24, 35n30 | |zu:1297786:TVA7VIWF}{, Warren Skinner's Watchman and Repository | Finney, et al., The Memoirs of Charles G. Finney: The Complete Restored Text, (1989) | 110n7| |zu:1297786:TVA7VIWF}{, Whittemore's Trumpet and Universalist Magazine | Finney, et al., The Memoirs of Charles G. Finney: The Complete Restored Text, (1989) | 277-278 |, esp. 277n51|zu:1297786:TVA7VIWF}{ cf. Henry Ware, Jr.'s Christian Register (Unitarian) | Finney, et al., The Memoirs of Charles G. Finney: The Complete Restored Text, (1989) | 189 | esp. 189n89 | zu:1297786:TVA7VIWF}{ On the rapid growth of the Universalist press, see | Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, (1989) |126 | |zu:1297786:K3EFRA55}
It looks more like the way I wanted it. CMS still gives some freedom in this kind of content note. Other than the Ibids, the only spot that is not as I wished is "277n51.;" because of the ".;" Don't know what's up with that. I would prefer a "." here: "WF}{ On" [89; On], but maybe the bracket spacing is what's affecting that. On the Ibids, it looks like I need to anticipate these and punctuate the end of the prefix field manually.
If there were any way to cancel final punctuation cite-by-cite, that would still be most efficient, because then we could compose . . . plunk reference, compose . . . plunk reference, etc.
I will experiment with this cite some more.
Thx,
m
'.'   ';'   and    ','
How about other punctuation marks, such as '!', '?' or '--', where the comment really needs to go in the suffix field in order to stay with the citation to which it refers, e.g.:
2John G. Adams, Fifty Notable Years: Views of the Ministry of Christian Universalism during the Last Half-Century with Biographical Sketches (Boston: Universalist Publishing House, 1882), 44, but see his own note 44n65! See also Catherine L. Albanese, ed., The Spirituality of the American Transcendentalists: Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Amos Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker, and Henry David Thoreau (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1988).
That said, even if we can't deliver completely clean output from the CSL processor, this is something that could be tidied up by a word processor macro at the final stage of production. That might make more sense than adding a toggle to suppress terminal punctuation.
Alternatively, there is still the possibility of removing terminal punctuation and delimiters from a customised local style entirely (which is easy to do), and providing all inter-cite joining text yourself through the cite affix fields. That would probably be easier to proofread in your markup than worrying with an additional toggle for suppression of terminal punctuation, and it would give you clean output.
Keeping it (current twlaw implementation) is good for regular usage, which accounts for 90+% of the cases. Loosing it is good for the few cases where adding additional information at the end of a cite is necessary. Using the suffix field in the Add Citation dialog for such purposes is ok, but having to edit the raw field code when trying to modify a suffix is cumbersome at best, and intimidating to non-techie users.
I know you have other considerations to take into account. For ease of use, though, a simple, accessible toggle would be great.