possible conflicts in data entry? unusual symbol

I finally got my annotated bibliography template working. When I print out my bibliography with chicago Manual Style (full) everything prints out well. When I print out the version from the annotated style I created I get the following symbol in front of SOME of the entries. ��� In place of where the author's name should be. I'm not sure what this means.I made sure that the author's name was the same in every case (all these articles are by the same person), and also that they all have abstracts. Sometimes they appear, sometimes they don't. Has anyone seen these before?
  • This is really just a continuation of your previous issue, but since you posted here: don't edit styles using Notepad. Use a real text editor with better Unicode support such as Notepad++ or jEdit, and make sure you're saving the file as UTF-8.

    (Alternatively, make sure Notepad is set to read and save as UTF-8, but I have no idea how well it handles that. Better to use a real text editor.)
  • (The style is probably using Unicode em dashes for subsequent authors, but you corrupted those when you saved the file.)
  • edited June 27, 2012
    I downloaded Notepad++, and saved it there. I'm afraid I don't know where to save the file as UTF-8 in Notepad++; if it's one of the options, I don't see it. I know you say that these actions should be able to be accomplished easily, but I am a humanities person of a certain age who has no programming experience. Something tells me it's not quite as simple as I thought (I do have a lot of word processing experience, however). Years ago I was able to make these types of changes in EndNote (it's about 3 years ago). I guess I can try to find out what jEdit is.
  • Thanks, Dan, for trying to help. I'm still not sure why it should be so difficult to get the program to print out an annotated bibliography.
  • Thanks, aurimas. I didn't know to look there.
  • one more question: in the notepad++ the second dropdown (under where I have the file name) says "save as type." What should I be choosing there? (csl isn't one of the options.
  • edited June 27, 2012
    edit: just leave it blank and save as a default, which is .txt.
  • I made the changes as suggested, saving as utf-8 in notepad++, saving with csl suffix, with type of file as txt. The problem is still occuring (��� sometimes instead of the author's name). any more suggestions? Adam Smith, I assume this doesn't happen to everyone who has tried to make an annotated bibliography. I just happened to make this bibliography with all the articles by one author (sometimes jointly with another), and sometimes ��� appears, sometimes it doesn't. I haven't yet tried a more typical bibliography with many authors' names.
  • what exactly do you need as a style? Just a Chicago style (which?) with an abstract?
  • I am using the Chicago style (full). With an annotation (abstract) underneath. This is an annotation that the student will write. They do weekly annotated bibliographies. Some of them may want to use a different style, so it was very useful to be going through this process. In past years students were handing in Endnote-produced bibliographies with a bunch of "junk" on the page. I made it clear that the end product has to look as if they had typed it themselves (no extraneous symbols). So, I understand how to go through this process now, and could help students achieve an annotation in another style, but I'm still not sure how do avoid those unusual symbols. I haven't tried starting from scratch today, but also need to work on other things. But, Adam, if you can produce a bibliography (annotated), all with articles or books by one author, without getting those unusual symbols, I'd be happy to know how. For training purposes I was constructing a bibliography of only things I had written, but that wouldn't ever be the case for my students, I'd say.
  • If your editor is set to use UTF-8 and you open a downloaded style as UTF-8 and save the file as UTF-8, you should get proper em dashes. (You should also be able to copy from the test pane, but opening the file directly should absolutely work if you're opening and saving as UTF-8.)
  • blixon - download and install this:
    https://gist.github.com/raw/3014922/77ab03fa05e13dd50cdd7e16550de60f7c9c358c/chicago-fullnote-bibliography-annotated.csl

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