footnote - repeat same number

geranon

I would like to use references in footnote, such as with "Chicago Manual of Style(note)". When the same reference is present on the same page, the number is incremented and the reference repeated in the footnote (with only the authors name).

I would like that for the same reference on the same page, the number would not be incremented and the reference not added. Is there a style which would do that or a way to modify this?

adamsmith

That isn't possible -- not just not with Zotero, but Word/LibreOffice always increment footnotes (and that's how footnotes are intended to work).

You can look at numeric styles (like Vancouver or Nature), which do repeat citation number in the text and then have a numbered bibliography in the back.

bwiernik

Use Word's "Cross-reference" feature to refer a second time to the same footnote on the page.

geranon

Thank you both! Even if it's not the answers I was hoping for, it is very clear.

bwiernik, the workaround you proposed is a very good trick! To be used at the very end of writing because if quotes jumps from one page to the other it can become frustrating but it can be very useful.

Geir Horn

Well, it should be possible. The Nature style does this correctly updating the numeric footnote marker to equal the number used for the first citation of a reference. However, the Nature style does not print the footnote. What we are looking for here is a combination of the way the Nature style treats the numeric footnote marker, and the way the Chicago style formats the footnote when the citation is first made. Unfortunately, I do not know the Citation Style Language well enough to do this "integration" quickly

adamsmith

CSL definitely can't do this, but what I'm saying above is that it also just isn't how footnotes work in Word: they always count up; there's no such thing as a repeating footnote number. The numbers in the Nature style are just superscript numbers, so operate entirely differently

Geir Horn

OK, so then I stand corrected, but can we have a footnote on first use and as superscript number if the same reference is used again? It seems that CSL is capable of doing IF-statements, so it should be possible to use the same mechanism used by Nature to find the previously assigned reference number, and use that as a superscript if such a reference number exists, or produce the footnote if it does not,

damnation

Footnotes are handled by Word entirely.

adamsmith

As I said, CSL can't do it and it'd require a complete reconceptualization of how CSL handles citations (CSL is a purposefully constrained language -- you can do a very specific set of things using if/else, not Turing-complete programming), so it's very, very unlikely to happen given this isn't a common requirement or even request.

bwiernik

You can use Word’s Cross-Reference feature to refer to a previous footnote again. You can find this button in the References tab in Word.

Geir Horn

Thanks for the answers! Cross-referencing is possible but not feasible since it is a manual operation that you can only do once the citations are frozen for the camera ready manuscript. A proper cross reference would be good, but not necessary since my interest is first and foremost to have the text set correctly.

From the above responses I infer that the mechanism is implemented something like this:
1. The database connector (do the Word-to-Zotero plug-in for Word) is asked to create a new citation
2. If the style is a "footnote style" (how does the CSL inform the plug-in about this?) a Word footnote is created.
3. The CSL script (for instance Chicago) is called upon to typeset the text string for the footnote, OR the citation tag if it is a "non-footnote style"

Yet, the database connector knows if this is a repeated insert or not (it asks the user whether to re-use an already cited reference). At the same time, only some of the styles are footnote styles, and therefore the CSL script must be able to tell the database connector always to create the footnote (or endnote if that is chosen by the user in the dialogue window). The keyword in the last sentence is 'always' as one could create a third type "Deferred footnote" which combines the two types and implements my desired IF test.

I agree with adamsmith that this requires more than just another CSL script, but I disagree that it is a "complete reconceptualization". Anyway, I have a strong request for this, and this thread was not started by me, so we are at least two users who would like to see this functionality added in the future. Thus, end of comments for now.

damnation

Word cross references will update if the number changes.