Style Request: Oscola

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  • perfect, thanks
  • I am new to Zotero so this may be out there, and I just haven't found it in the forums or guides... but has anyone worked out how to enter Hansard?

    Hansard is the record of parliamentary debates in commonwealth countries.

    The format should be really simple:
    Title, volume, columns

    So the "title" which is eg. HC Deb 3 November 2017 (the date is part of title)
    This should be without italics (so not item type: book)
    It shouldn't have apostrophes around it (so not item type: book section)
    The title is followed by comma then volume.
    Volume is followed by comma then columns.

    Columns are like paragraphs in a judgment. They are for pinpointing where in the debate the particular section of speech is happening.

    I have played around with different item types for a workaround, but cannot find one that follows the very simple "Title comma volume comma columns" format required.

    The Oscola Guide entry is:
    3.4.2 Hansard and parliamentary reports There are three series of Hansard, one reporting debates on the floor of the House of Commons, one debates in the House of Lords, and one debates in the Public Bill committees of the House of Commons, which replaced standing committees in 2007. When referring to the first two series, cite the House abbreviation (HL or HC), followed by ‘Deb’, then the full date, the volume and the column. Use ‘col’ or ‘cols’ for column(s). In the House of Commons, written answers are indicated by the suffix ‘W’ after the column number; in the House of Lords, they are indicated by the prefix ‘WA’ before the column number.
    HC Deb 3 February 1977, vol 389, cols 973–76
    Cite debates in the Public Bill committees of the House of Commons with the title of the Bill, followed by ‘Deb’, followed by the date and the column number. If the Bill title is very long, begin the citation with ‘PBC Deb’, followed by the Bill number in brackets, as in the alternative form shown in the first example. The second example shows how to cite debates in the old standing committees. Health Bill Deb 30 January 2007, cols 12–15

    Any help with a work around for this would be great.
  • @adamsmith

    Just checking back in to see if it was possible to make the correction we discussed last year regarding cross referencing of statutes? Mine is still cross referencing statutes even though OSCOLA says not to. It wouldn't matter except that where I have a statute that includes a cross reference, the section number does not show up (even though if you click on the reference itself it has been entered).
  • Hi all,

    I have a problem with Zotero and I'm not sure if it's a bug or something I'm doing wrong. I'm using OSCOLA in the Word for Mac plug-in.

    Basically, if I cite a case I last cited more than one footnote earlier, the page reference won't show up. For example, I might have:

    n 1: CCSU v Minister for the Civil Service [1985] AC 374, 417
    n 2: ibid 418

    But if I insert another footnote between the two, the page reference in the second cite will suddenly disappear. Like so:

    n 1: CCSU v Minister for the Civil Service [1985] AC 374, 417
    n 2: [another reference]
    n 3: CCSU v Minister for the Civil Service (n 1)

    The only work-around I can think of is to change the page references to suffixes whenever I have this problem. However, I don't really fancy doing this manually for my entire thesis...

    Is there any way of easily fixing this? Am I doing something obviously stupid? Any advice would be enormously appreciated!
  • That's a bug in Zotero's OSCOLA style -- it's been that way for quite some time, I'm surprised no one noticed that before. We'll take a look, but might take a little. Thanks for reporting.
  • I've been struggling with that too. It happens with the section numbers of statutes as well, not just cases - when you cite the statute the second time, it just puts the cross reference (n1) without the section number, even if you've entered the section number into the citation itself.

    eg

    n1: Human Rights Act 1998, s1
    n2: [other reference]
    n3: Human Rights Act 1998 (n1)

    (even when you enter 'Human Rights Act 1998, s3' for the third reference).

    [strictly Oscola says that statutes shouldn't be cross referenced (see Oscola pg 6) but the missing section numbers are a bigger issue]

    If this could be sorted, it would be brilliant. Thank you!
  • That's fantastic, thanks so much! I really appreciate the speedy reply. (I should have added that journal articles, books etc don't have the problem.) It would be great if it could 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.
    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.

    It'd be great to get some testing on this, so let me know how this works.
    Any further problems please let us know & thanks for reporting
  • hi, i'm trying to use this system and encountering the following problem:

    When putting the law report 'All ER' into any case that I'm trying to add, when I generate the reference it misses out the 'All'. This is a significant problem, as this is the All England Law Report series; one of the most important legal documents in the country!

    Is this fixable?

    Thanks!
  • That's quite odd -- this is using regular Zotero? And "All ER" is in the Reporter field?
  • Hi, I was working with Bethany yesterday, and can confirm that she’d been putting All ER into the reporter field.
  • @adamsmith Thank you so much.
  • Hi,
    I've just noticed two tiny problems when citing legislation.

    1) When 'ibid' is used because the reference is repeated, the section number is not preceded by 's' or 'ss' and I think it should be as it's a section number not a page number.

    It looks like this:

    1. Sexual Offences Act 2003, s 4
    2. ibid 7

    when I think it should be:
    Sexual Offences Act 2003, s 4
    2. ibid s 7

    2) Oscola (p 24) says that there should be a comma after the year of the act and before the section number but these aren't showing up.

    Is there any way these could be amended? Thanks so much.
  • Hi, @adamsmith
    I've just noticed two tiny problems when citing legislation.

    1) When 'ibid' is used because the reference is repeated, the section number is not preceded by 's' or 'ss' and I think it should be as it's a section number not a page number.

    It looks like this:

    1. Sexual Offences Act 2003, s 4
    2. ibid 7

    when I think it should be:
    Sexual Offences Act 2003, s 4
    2. ibid s 7

    2) Oscola (p 24) says that there should be a comma after the year of the act and before the section number but these aren't showing up.

    Is there any way these could be amended? Thanks so much.

    (PS I asked about this in May but didn't hear anything, my PhD is due in imminently and I would be grateful if the first issue could be sorted as it looks strange in the footnotes)
  • I am also having the problem with "All ER" in the reporter field being replaced as ER in footnotes when using the Word plugin. Any fix yet?
  • @fbennett is there any way citeproc-js would modify "All ER" to "ER" in case reporters? If so, any way to avoid?
  • The Zotero abbreviations data contains this entry:
    {
    ...
    "container-title-word": {
    ...
    "all": "",
    ...
    }
    }

    In the original abbreviations setup in MLZ, keys in the container-title-word segment were used to generate suggested abbreviations in the Abbrevs Filter, which the user could then adjust manually. I'm not sure where it was originally implemented (i.e. in citeproc-js, in the Abbrevs Filter, or in MLZ/Jurism), but I removed the feature quite awhile back, because it was adding a little to the Jurism maintenance burden, and seemed likely to cause more confusion than it was worth.

    Zotero supplies its own abbreviation data, and word/word-fragment abbreviation is implemented in a hook function supplied to the processor. That's likely where the word is being removed. If you can disable abbreviations, that should fix it.
  • Hi!
    I am citing quite a lot of foreign materials, and the capitalisation in book/chapters/case names works really strange. I suppose that this is happening because only a list of non-capitalised words must have been entered, as Oscola rule distinction is only between "major and minor" words, not grammatical categories or by any specific word length. I will give some examples.

    Cesare Beccaria and James Anson Farrer, Crimes and Punishments : Including a New Translation of Beccaria’s ‘Dei Delitti e Delle Pene,’ (Chatto & Windus 1880)
    "Delle" if it were in English, would certainly be a 'minor' word (on/of).

    René Bloy, Die Dogmatische Bedeutung Der Strafausschließungs- Und Strafaufhebungsgründe (1976)
    "Der" and "Und" (the, and) would also be 'minor' words.

    Tatjana Hörnle, ‘Sollen Verjährungsfristen Für Den Sexuellen Missbrauch von Minderjährigen Verlängert Werden?’ 2010 Goltdammer’s Archiv 388, 391.
    "Für" and "Den" are wrong, whereas "von" is right...

    How can I solve this?
    Thanks a lot!!
  • Be sure to enter the two-letter language abbreviations (en, de, nl, etc.) in the Language field. Anything other than “en” will disable automatic capitalization.
  • Fantastic! Thank you so much!
  • Oby
    edited June 25, 2020
    There is a small issue with citing generic documents (secondary sources) using the OSCOLA style. Long story short, the parenthesis with year/date is missing.

    This is the guidance given for generic secondary sources in OSCOLA (4th edn) page 39:
    author, | ‘title’ | (additional information, | publisher | year)

    Here is an example output, with a pinpoint cite to page 2:
    UN High Commissioner for Refugees, ‘Note on International Protection’ 2 [URL] accessed 28 January 2016.
    I guess a correct output would be (with the UN as publisher and the date added):
    UN High Commissioner for Refugees, ‘Note on International Protection’ (United Nations, 7 September 1994) 2 [URL] accessed 28 January 2016.
    EDIT: forgot that this forum strips the hyperlinks... I have added [URL] to indicate where the hyperlinks usually are.
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