Refering to a previous footnote number

oliviahamlyn
Is it possible in OSCOLA to refer back to an earlier footnote just by number? Eg "See n 4".
Thanks
  • adamsmith
    without any note of a specific reference? No. I think Word and LibreOffice can do this, though.
  • oliviahamlyn
    Thanks Adam - yes it does.
  • hansgrabhoff
    Sorry I have a related question, concerning cross-references under OSCOLA generally. I appreciate that OSCOLA automatically inserts cross-references in the form of "Weatherill (n 10)." In very long texts, however, this looks weird: the reader might have to turn over 100 pages to find the footnote referred to.
    Would it be possible to suppress cross-referencing after a certain number of pages?
    Thanks for any idea.
  • adamsmith
    CSL has a "near-note" position:
    We can define a certain number of notes and treat subsequent references that fall within that range differently (e.g. include cross reference) from those that do not. (It's not possible to do this with pages, I don't think CSL knows anything about pages in a document).

    I don't think I'll want to do this for the official OSCOLA style, but if this is of interest, I can tell you how to modify the style to do this, which wouldn't be terribly hard.
  • hansgrabhoff
    yes please, I'd be grateful if you could tell me
  • adamsmith
    Find the section from <else-if position="subsequent"> (line 586 if you look at the style here)
    to the corresponding </else-if> (in line 613) and copy it right below itself, so you have the exact same thing twice.

    Now, in the first instance, replace "subsequent" by "near-note".
    In the second instance, delete both rows that look like this
    <text variable="first-reference-note-number" prefix="(n " suffix=")"/>

    That's all you need to do for this to work. Now you can set the near-note-distance (the default value is 5, i.e. you wouldn't get a cross reference if two notes are more than 5 footnotes apart).
    If you'd want this to be, say, 20, find
    <citation et-al-min="4" et-al-use-first="1">
    and change to
    <citation et-al-min="4" et-al-use-first="1" near-note-distance="20">

    For general instructions see here:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
    Don't forget to change style name and ID -- otherwise your changes will get overwritten daily.
  • mclark5
    This gets close to solving the issue I have. I need to restart the footnote numbering in each section/chapter of a single document. Restarting the citation numbers via word works fine, but Zotero treats the FNs as consecutively numbered and links the above n back to the first instance (eg FN15 in ch 3: Author X, above n 400.).

    The near-note approach might work with some playing around, but there may well be instances where, say, there's a 50 or 100 FN gap between citations but they are still within the same chapter and thus need to not restart.

    Any thoughts on resetting for each section? Thanks again for all the amazing work on Zotero :)
  • adamsmith
    nothing easy, but you could author the chapters individually and then remove the Zoter field codes in copies of the chapters before merging those. That'll stop the cross-referencing from updating. (Do make sure, obviously, to keep the original with all Zotero references in tact so you have working copies should you need to change something).
  • mclark5
    Thanks @adamsmith that's probably the easiest solution -- I might keep using the collated version then separate it into individual files, update the fields and remove the field codes then re-collate at the final stages (will need to do minor editing on the citations anyway, so no big deal as long as I don't need to move any of them around). Thanks again
  • afifiresearcher
    Hi Mclark 5,

    I also facing the same problem.
    How do you remove the field codes.
    Thank you.
  • afifiresearcher
    Hi Adam Smith,
    How to remove the field codes?
    Thank you.
  • adamsmith
    click on the "Remove Field Codes" button in the Zotero Add-on (the one with the broken chainlink)
  • afifiresearcher
    edited November 26, 2015
    Thank you Adamsmith
  • NellyLaramah
    Sorry, i made an error in previous note.
    My question is about cross referencing. am working with OSCOLA.
    Lets say my footnote 109 is Carsten Stahn, A Critical Introduction to International Criminal Law (1st edn, Cambridge University Press 2018) 75.
    if i refer to the same author at a different page say page 78 in footnote 120, zotero places it as : Stahn (n 109) 76.

    If I go back and add stuff that comes with a footnote before footnote 109, the original 'Stahn' reference will become 110.

    All the cross referencing will now read as Stahn (n 109) which is incorrect as the previous one has moved down. How can I solve this?
  • bwiernik
    If the citation is still active and connected to Zotero, The note number will be updated the next time you click Refresh in the Zotero tab in Word or add/edit another Zotero citation.

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