Scope of disambiguate-add-year-suffix

richard.masters

I am developing a CSL file for our version of Harvard referencing by adapting pre-existing ones.

There appears to be an edge case error which I cannot get round and would appreciate some advice.

I use disambiguation-add-year-suffix="true" in the <citation> element.

Use case:
Where two or more entries for webpages (websites) have the same date in the "accessed" field and they also have *no* year of publication then the year element in "Accessed: dd mmm yyyy" gets the disambiguation suffix a, b, c...

I understand that the scope of 'disambiguation-add-year-suffix' is over <citation> and <bibliography> elements but I can't see why it is applied to the year element of the accessed variable.

I can't see a way round it in CSL so at the moment the metadata itself would have to be doctored in Zotero, or the output citation / bibliography amended.

Hope that's clear - many thanks.

richard.masters

CSL file uploaded to GitHub Gist:
https://gist.github.com/461b9a3660044e7d54d2

Example of output:

Citations:
(Anon no date)

(Anon no date)

Bibliography:
Anon. Keith Thomas reviews ‘The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home’ by Peter Mandler, ‘Ancient as the Hills’ by James Lees-Milne and ‘The Fate of the English Country House’ by David Littlejohn · LRB 13 November 1997. [Online]. Available at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v19/n22/keith-thomas/hugh-dalton-to-the-rescue (no date) (Accessed: 24 March 2015a).

Anon. Wortley Hall & Gardens. [Online]. Available at: http://www.wortleyhall.org.uk/hall-gardens/ (no date) (Accessed: 24 March 2015b).

Thanks,
Richard

Rintze

That's weird. The "(Anon no date)" citations should at least show a disambiguating year-suffix. The CSL processor might get confused somewhat because your style uses both <text value=" (no date) "/> and <text term="no date" form="long"/>. It would be better to use the "no date" term throughout.

adamsmith

I think this has come up before. I'll point Frank to this, he'll know more.

Another thing to try would be to explicitly set the year suffix variable the way it's done e.g. in APA style.

fbennett

Setting year-suffix explicitly for citations and in the bibliography is the way to go.
<text variable="year-suffix"/>
The processor could hypothetically be adjusted to automatically append something to the "no date" term when it is used, but it doesn't do that at present.

richard.masters

Many thanks for your guidance Rintze, Adam, Frank.

Thought I'd let you know this is now working well for me. It was an edge case anyway, I'm but happier that I now produce:

(Anon no date a)
(Anon no date b)
(Beresford 1990a)
(Beresford 1990b)

Anon. (no date a). Keith Thomas reviews ‘The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home’ by Peter Mandler, ‘Ancient as the Hills’ by James Lees-Milne and ‘The Fate of the English Country House’ by David Littlejohn · LRB 13 November 1997. [Online]. Available at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v19/n22/keith-thomas/hugh-dalton-to-the-rescue (Accessed: 24 March 2015).

Anon. (no date b). Wortley Hall & Gardens. [Online]. Available at: http://www.wortleyhall.org.uk/hall-gardens/ (Accessed: 24 March 2015).

Beresford, M.W. (1990a). English Heritage book of Wharram Percy : deserted medieval village. London: Batsford.

Beresford, M.W. (1990b). Wharram Percy : deserted medieval village. New Haven ; London: Yale University Press.