Updating Zotero Styles (e.g., Bluebook Inline)

I have ZERO idea if I can pull this off, and even less idea about the correct way to try.

I am a practicing attorney who used to be a Director of Information Systems, and I have some programming experience with various languages, although I never heard of CSL until a few days ago.

The Bluebook Inline style for Zotero/Juris-M was created in, apparently, and has not been updated since, 2014. It does not work correctly with Microsoft Word. For example, if I try to use the plug-in and enter a citation to a case (e.g., People v. Munch, 52 Cal.App.5th 464 (2020)), and specify a page number (e.g., 466), the Bluebook Inline style will print the very first entry as People v. Munch, 52 Cal. App. 5th at 466. This is incorrect. It should be People v. Munch, 52 Cal.App.5th 464, 466 (2020) for the first time used. Afterwards, it would be appropriate to use a shorter name, and would appear as Munch, supra, 52 Cal.App.5th at 466, or as Id. if it had just appeared as the immediately prior citation. (Note that I am forced to leave out italics here.)

I want to see if I can update this to the latest Bluebook (21st Edition) rules.

I have downloaded the bluebook-inline.csl. I have renamed it to bluebook-twenty-first.csl. I am editing it in Sublime Text 4.

QUESTIONS:

1. Because I have downloaded the bluebook-inline.csl file to modify, should I include the prior authors as "contributors", even though I plan to do the entire update myself?

2. How do I find out the proper variables to use for the various fields in Zotero? For example, the "Reporter Volume" in the sidebar of Zotero for the previously-mentioned case is "52" and the Reporter is "Cal. App. 5th" (but the spaces should not be there, and I presume they should be edited in the sidebar). The "First Page" is listed (correctly) as "464". How do I learn the names of all the fields to use in the CSL file?

3. Is there anything else I should know that I have not mentioned already? I have used perl, C++ (minimally), and MUMPS (moderately), and have built numerous websites using PHP, CSS3, and HTML5. I can read some other programming languages. CSL is going to be new to me.

Thanks, in advance, for any comments, warnings, or advice. I do not want to do anything politically-incorrect (like failing to make attributions to people who came before me), or otherwise wrong.

--
Rick Horowitz
Attorney
Fresno, California
Reachable at rick at rhdefense.com
  • 1. Generally yes, err on the side of keeping contributors
    2. https://aurimasv.github.io/z2csl/typeMap.xml#map-report
    3. https://zoteromusings.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/writing-csl-features-and-best-practices/ might be helpful

    Any reason you want to work on the inline Bluebook style? I think the other ones are better and the inline one is kind of a legacy that probably shouldn't exist in the first place
  • edited October 25, 2021
    First, thanks for the links, and input.

    I only saw one other Bluebook style, and that appeared to be for people writing law review articles; i.e., it created footnotes/endnotes. Legal briefs (at least in the jurisdictions where I work) do not allow citations to be in the footnotes/endnotes.

    I also saw something called "Indigo" that looks to be a legal citation method. I've never heard of Indigo before.

    [EDIT: I now see that Indigo is supposed to be the 21st edition of the Bluebook, but it's not outputting citations the way I've been using the Bluebook. It would appear I need to slow down and take a look at Indigo.]

    So that was the reason for the choice.

    Perhaps I should look at the other style(s) before making a decision, to see if it's easier to modify it (them).

    I am new to CLS, although I have some experience, as I noted in my original post, that I'm hoping will help me come to grips with it.

    Thanks.
  • I believe I jumped the gun. I see now that the reason Indigo didn't work the way I thought it should has to do with the data that was imported into Juris-M/Zotero when I saved some cases to experiment with. (It filled in the "Court" field, which caused more data than should usually appear in my state court briefs to show up.)

    I'm going to take a step back and look at Indigo, and the whole Juris-M environment, more carefully before I do anything else.

    Thanks again on the links and input.
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