In-text subsequent citations don't suppress author

carlyosborn · March 22, 2015

If I cite the same reference text twice in a row, I don't want to have to manually suppress the author every time. I'm using in-text author-date citations (MLA 7th ed.)

What happens:
The argument that all dogs are black (Brown, 152) is a contentious one (Brown, 166).

What I want:
The argument that all dogs are black (Brown, 152) is a contentious one (166).

Do I have to go through my 75,000-word thesis and manually suppress the author every time I cite the same author multiple times in a row? Is there a style that will only include the author if it's NOT the last cited author?

I would be very grateful for some help on this!

adamsmith · March 22, 2015

You could set up a style that does automatically suppress the author in those instances (though I don't think we have one available). The problem is that what Zotero/CSL cannot do is to tell whether that citation is in the same paragraph--but that's the only situation in which citation styles like MLA want you to not repeat the author.

carlyosborn · March 22, 2015

Thanks for your prompt reply, v appreciated.
I am willing to edit the CSL style to suppress the author, and fix the paragraph issue manually at the end.
What lines would I add to the CSL style to create this behaviour?

adamsmith · March 22, 2015

after line 297
https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/blob/master/modern-language-association.csl#L297
add


<choose>
<if position="ibid-with-locator">
<text variable="locator"/>
</if>
<else>

and after line 315:
https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/blob/master/modern-language-association.csl#L315

</else>
</choose>

general instructions here: http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step

carlyosborn · March 22, 2015

Brilliant, that's worked exactly as I need. Thankyou very much.

carlyosborn · April 8, 2015

Hi,
I'm now using this style for my thesis but, oddly, it only works in some cases.
For a while I thought it was only when the references are in separate paragraphs, but no, I currently have a single paragraph with 3 references in it to the same book. The full citation (author title page#) appears every time.

Can this be fixed?

chrstphrsnw · August 9, 2023

I know this is an old thread, but I wonder how to implement this solution in a recent release of chicago-author-date.

Is there something that would prevent baking this functionality into the standard CSL file?