Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy - csl style notes for users

Some Documentation on how to use this style, incl. changes from Chicago note-no-ibid, on which it was based:

1. I've removed the final punctuation (it was a full-stop) from the citation note format. This allows flexibility for the citation of a work to feature in lists, be followed by page numbers manually typed in, be followed by ad loc., come at the end of a sentence, and other things that are normal use for citations and would be hindered by a full-stop after each citation.

2. The bibliography style works for books ONLY when the record for the book contains its publication location, as OSAP citation style requires. If this is missing, the biblio format will fail to put the publication date in brackets. I guess this is something that could be tightened up in a future edit, if someone knows how to do that.

3. Here is how abbreviated titles are "announced" in this style - e.g. the way [/Apparent Good/] features in J. Moss, /Aristotle on the Apparent Good/ [/Apparent Good/] (Oxford, 2012).

(i) Where such an abbreviation is 'announced' in square brackets [], this happens in that item's first citation, and in the bibliography. If it's a book, it'll be in italics (indicated by / above), if it's an article, or book-chapter, it'll be in single quotes non-italic.

(ii) This will appear WHERE AND ONLY WHERE a short title (title-short) is specified in the record for that work. This is how to control when you want such an abbreviation to appear, and when you don't - for example, if a work is cited only once, you need to make sure it DOESN'T have a short title, otherwise that one time it is cited, it will appear with its abbreviation announced, as if it were going to appear subsequently. This is the one "workaround" in this style - CSL can't tell how many times an item is cited within a document, so you have to engineer this by filling in or deleting the short title in the record for that item. That may be annoying if you need that field to be filled in because you're citing that work in a different document. Sorry. That's the best I could do.

(iii) If a short title is not specified for works cited multiple times, the CSL will use the full title in subsequent references (though note that subsequent references will still be shortened to: Author, Title, pages (if used)). And actually this is exactly what you want in certain cases where the work's full title is sufficiently short that there is no need for an abbreviated version of it to be coined for subsequent citations. For example, Fortenbaugh's book, Aristotle on Emotion will get a full note the first time used, and then the title used in subsequent citations will also be 'Aristotle on Emotion'. Since there is no separate abbreviated title, there is nothing that needs "announcing" to readers the first time this is cited.

4. I have tested this style for journal articles, books and book sections only. It seems to work perfectly to generate what OSAP requires, once I have adjusted the biblio records for the above features. I would be very happy for others to extend this for other types of work (though, as far as I can see, OSAP have no specified requirements for any other type of work, so perhaps falling back to use standard Chicago may be the right thing - though perhaps they'd want to ensure that publication location and date went in brackets).


Apologies for lack of conciseness - I've tried to document everything I could think of that might help a user or future developer.
  • There's a problem with this style. When it comes to inserting the bibliography it duplicates the date so that it appears twice e.g.

    Verbeke, G., L’évolution de La Doctrine Du Pneuma, Du Stoicisme à s. Augustin : Étude Philosophique, (Paris, 1945) (Paris, 1945).
    Vogt, K.M., Belief and Truth : A Skeptic Reading of Plato [Belief and Truth], (Oxford ; New York, 2012) (Oxford ; New York, 2012).
    ———, ‘Sons of the Earth: Are the Stoics Metaphysical Brutes?’ [‘Sons of the Earth’], Phronesis, 54, no. 2 54, no. 2, (2009) (2009), 136–154.
    Watson, G., ‘Discovering the Imagination : Platonists and Stoics on Phantasia’ [‘Discovering the Imagination’], The Question of Eclectism. Studies in Later Greek Philosophy, 1988, 1988, 208–233.

    Is anyone able to fix this within the next few days?
  • @Rovertos this is now fixed. Update your styles using the "Update Now" button in the general tab of the Zotero preferences. You may have to switch to a different style and back for the changes to take effect in an existing document.
  • @adamsmith cheers mate thanks for doing it so quickly, really helped me out
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