double surnames alphabetical order in bibliography [solved]

Rebecca Bennett
Hello all,

I have discovered that in my bibliography (using the European Archaeology style) one of my authors, "De Laet" is inserted alphabetically with in the "Ls" whereas in this case, my reviewers would like to see it with the "Ds". So currently the order of double surnames is being defined by the second word of the surname and I would like it to be defined by the first word.

Is there a flag to change / override this in the style so that the order is always based on the first word of the surname or to edit the record for the paper so that zotero recognises the "De" as part of the name in this instance not a prefix (such as "van der")?

Many thanks for reading,
Rebecca
  • ajlyon
    You'll want to set demote-non-dropping-particle to never, as an attribute in the cs:style tag.
  • adamsmith
    Unfortunately that style doesn't follow a clear style guide - but if you have a publication that follows a guide and can provide examples of de Laet being sorted as "d" I'd be happy to change that for the style globally.
  • ajlyon
    edited December 12, 2011
    And if this is documented somewhere, like the style guide, we can change this in the style in the repository as well.
  • Rebecca Bennett
    hello ajlyon and adamsmith,
    Thanks all for the responses. I have got the bibliography looking just the way I want now. :)
    I am actually working with my own modified version of the European Archaeology style to fit with my University's requirements. I am trying to persuade the Uni to validate my style officially so that I can get it published here but they are a bit wedded to Endnote so my requests for it to be double checked have always gone unanswered. :(
    Cheers,
    Rebecca
  • iselim
    Hi everybody,

    Sorry to warm up this old discussion but I have exactly the same problem (using MLA style) with 'De Quincey', who figures at the letter Q in my bibliography instead of D.

    Now, I don't know where I can find and change the cs:style tag mentioned in one of the responses. More generally, where can I configure the style I am using, in case I need to adapt something. Does that make sense at all if one is not familiar with codes?

    Thanks a lot,
    Markus
  • adamsmith
    If you can provide documentation that De Qunicey _should_ be sorted under "D" in MLA style we can just change the style on the repository accordingly.

    Otherwise - yes, this is absolutely doable for someone who has never looked at any code:
    First have a look here:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
    Then open the MLA style (or the style you want to change) in the Zotero test pane. Right on the top, in the second line, you'll see
    <style xmlns="http://purl.org/net/xbiblio/csl" class="in-text" version="1.0" demote-non-dropping-particle="sort-only">

    change that to

    <style xmlns="http://purl.org/net/xbiblio/csl" class="in-text" version="1.0" demote-non-dropping-particle="never">
    (i.e. change "sort-only" to "never")
    and follow the instructions for getting the style back into Zotero.
  • iselim
    Thanks, I will try this in a bit. The issue in MLA seems to be slightly more complicated, though. The MLA Handbook says in 3.8.1:

    "With some exceptions, especially in English-language contexts, French de following a first name or a title such as Mme or duc is not used with the last name alone.

    La Boétie (Étienne de La Boétie)
    Maupassant (Guy de Maupassant)
    Nemours (Louis-Charles d'Orléans, duc de Nemours)

    but

    De Quincey (Thomas De Quincey) [Hey, I didn't know he is actually mentioned in the MLA guide. How exciting... ;)]

    When the last name has only one syllable, however, de is usually retained

    de Gaulle (Charles de Gaulle)"

    If I understand this correctly De Quincey is an exception (the only one?), as is any single syllable surname, and if there are other names with this prefix in the bibliography they have to follow other rules.

    Can I adapt the style to recognize exceptions to this rule or could this even be implemented in the style in the repository?

    Cheers,
    Markus
  • adamsmith
    oooh - another reason to hate MLA style! I should start a collection.
    No, unfortunately you can't specify an exception. You'll have to fix this manually at the end.
  • iselim
    At least it's just one exception I have so far and I'm not intending to include any works by de Gaulle...

    Thanks for your help!
  • fbennett
    If a name with a leading particle should always be treated as a unit (sorted on the particle, and never dropping the particle, ever, regardless of the bibliography in which it is included), you can enclose the name in quotes in Zotero. But use that only for exceptional cases.
  • RintzeRintze
    But if in "Thomas De Quincey" the "De" is capitalized (i.e. the last name is stored as "De Quincey"), it isn't parsed as a particle, right?
  • fbennett
    Looks like it is parsed, and by intention. IIRC parsing of uppercase particles was introduced after working through some examples with French users.
  • iselim
    Sorry to warm up an old thread.I have missed fbennet's post until recently and would like to make sure that I understand it correctly.

    Enclosing De Quincey in quotation marks ("De Quincey") in the author field of the zotero info tab does not make a difference. I tried single quotation marks, but this also leaves the item in the same position in the bibliography and adds double quotation marks.
  • fbennett
    edited November 7, 2012
    I've just done some testing in MLZ. I'm not sure whether the behaviour I'm seeing is shared by mainstream Zotero, but here's something to try. In MLZ (at least) the bibliography sort order is not updated when the name changes in this way. I'm not sure why (yet), but I did get the new ordering by closing the word processor and restarting Firefox. When I reinserted the bibliography after reopening the document in the word processor, it came out in the new order.

    This obviously isn't the way we want this to work, but if you can check to see whether that works at your end, it would be very helpful.
  • iselim
    Yes that works. I did not think of restarting the programs because usually any changes in zotero are immediately transferred to the word document. That's great and because it only concerns one author (the guy I am citing most, though) it works as a workaround.

    Many thanks!
  • fbennett
    Great. It's definitely a fault, so we'll work on getting it fixed.
  • iselim
    Almost perfect. I did not realise before that--although it is now under the letter 'D'--the alphabetical order after the first two letters is not correct. Thus, 'De Quincey' comes before 'Deniehy', the space in the last name is conventionally not considered in indexes or works cited lists.

    Actually De Quincey might not be the only problematic case. I had a look at MLA 7 and it also depends on the language of the name. Thus 'Guy de Maupassant' (French) would be listed under the letter M but 'De Sica' (Italian) under the letter 'D'. De Sica furthermore would come after 'Descartes', meaning that the space is not considered in alphabetization (as in the case of 'De Quincey').
  • fbennett
    edited November 7, 2012
    There may be a couple of layers to the problem. One is updating of the bibliography (more on that below). The other is the comparison method used for the sort. Ordinarily this should be done with a collation that ignores the space between characters. However, the collation engine in Firefox is broken in some configurations, and the processor uses a straight binary string comparison (which include spaces and other stuff) as a fallback.

    We'll need to check more deeply, but it looks like that's what's happening here. I get the correct sort order with Chicago Fullnote, as shown in this screenshot:

    http://imgur.com/r6zpF

    This is under Linux, with Firefox 12.0 with Multilingual Zotero (MLZ). There is a small possibility that the more recent CSL processor version in MLZ is sorting better than the version currently in mainstream Zotero. Otherwise, the reason must be that the collation is failing on your system for some reason (and falling back to a binary string sort), but not failing on mine.

    Shall we look into this further together? I would be asking you to install a plugin, run some simple trials and send back some log data from Zotero.
  • fbennett
    On the bibliography update issue, while putting together a test, I realised what the problem is. There is no change in the visual form of the citation between the with-quotes form and the without-quotes form. As far as the processor is concerned there has been no change, so the item is not updated or repositioned within the list. This can be fixed, but it's not really a bug (in the sense that the processor is behaving as I expected it to do). I'll take some time to think it over, and see if I can come up with an efficient way of triggering an update in this case.
  • iselim
    I'd be happy to look into this further. If you could give me the precise steps you want me to do, this will help since I am not really familiar with things that go beyond the usual usage of programs and applications.

    Concerning the bibliography update. I could refresh the document, which was sufficient to move 'De Quincey' up to the letter 'D'. I did not have to insert the bibliography again. Testing the various possibilities, it seems to me that a restart of Firefox is necessary. Word does not necessarily have to be restarted.
  • fbennett
    The first step is just to confirm the details of your environment. If I can find a similar system here, I may be able to test directly, without bothering you with cumbersome back-and-forth. The relevant bits would be:

    Firefox version
    Operating system
    Zotero version
    Style
  • iselim
    Below is the environment information:

    Firefox 15.0.1
    Mac OSX 10.7.5
    Zotero 3.0.8
    MLA Style

    I also work on a Windows computer (Windows 7) in my office, with the same results. I believe I have the same Firefox and Zotero versions there but I would have to check next week.
  • fbennett
    I'll try to investigate this locally, but I may be back for help later.
  • fbennett
    I've checked behaviour in Windows 7 this end, and I'm able to reproduce your result with "De Quincey" (as a unit) and "Deniehy", where "De Quincey" comes out first. The sort is functioning as intended, applying the collation definition for the locale that is delivered from Firefox.

    I checked CMS for sort-order guidance. I was unable to find a sample bibliography on this point, but I did find a link to the Unicode Collation Algorithm at CMS 16.67 (16th edn.). Unfortunately, the algorithm specification only tells us what is possible, not what is correct. The possible variations are many and subtle -- there is a table in Section 3.2.2 of the specification that is worth a look.

    For the MLA example you cite, it would work as a hack to just remove all spaces from sort keys in the processor, but I'm not sure whether that would produce incorrect results in other locales (or possibly other styles). A better solution would be to handle the comparison weights entirely in the collation, since languages may vary in their treatment of the space (and other characters), but that may not be feasible, since the processor has no control over that end of the infrastructure.

    Let me open a discussion on the CSL development list, and we'll see where that leads us.
  • RintzeRintze
    edited November 12, 2012
    Maybe the Common Locale Data Repository gives some instruction on the various ways collation is used across locales? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Locale_Data_Repository
    http://cldr.unicode.org/index/cldr-spec/collation-guidelines
  • iselim
    Thanks for this information. It looks like a very tricky issue. Itcan be easily fixed at the end. Integrating it in Zotero would just make it more complete and even more efficient to use. Thanks!
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