Chicago with alternate date formats (day month year)

kgunnell
I'm working with a small publisher who uses a modified Chicago format. It's basically the same as the Chicago full note with bibliography. However, the publisher requires that the dates be in a day month year format (10 May 1892). The zotero citation style doesn't do this. Even if I input it in the publisher's format, it comes out Month Day, Year (May 10, 1892). Can I change this? Or, is there another citation style that has already made this change?

Also, I need to stop zotero from automatically populating the date field with "n.d." if nothing is input. I have many, many sources where the date is included in the title, and it is incongruent to have the title with a date with n.d. next to it (e.g. Minutes, 5 May 1897, n.d.) If I put the date in the date field rather than the title, my subsequent references comes up as "Minutes." Since I have dozens of minutes on different dates, the citations become indistinguishable from another.

Any suggestions?
  • adamsmith
    I can really only point you hear:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
    CMoS is a rather complex style and small edits are often not trivial. There is no manual way outside of the citation style to override those settings.

    You can, btw. determine the short title of an item by changing the content of the "Short Title" field towards the bottom.
  • kgunnell
    Thanks. I'll try changing the short title for my "Minutes" citations.

    I looked at the style-editing step-by-step, and it seems a little daunting. Do you know if any of the other default journal styles have the alternate date format? How would I find out? Do I have to download them all and just test it?
  • adamsmith
    you can hove over the styles in the repo - many of them will display at least one full date. I can't tell you if any style has that date format (and then - if that style would fit your needs otherwise) - I would think there's likely to be at least one style with the date format, though.
  • willem.swinnen
    Hello Adam

    I'm near to finishing a customized Chicago style. One more thing: the date should show as day-month-year, rather than month-day-year. In Franks Visual CSL editor, the "date-parts" does not give this option. I can choose between "year-month-day", "year-month" and "year". Since it nevertheless comes out as "month-day-year", I kind of got the feeling that this is not a CSL kind of thing to solve.

    A forum search pointed out it is a locale thing, picked up by the citeproc. One thread ended in the following instructions in the Zotero Standalone: Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Config Editor > I accept the risk! > "intl.locale.matchOS" to false and "general.useragent.locale" to en-GB.

    I restarted Zotero (version 5.0.66) and Word. and refreshed the citations but nothing changed. So I went back to Config Edit searched on "en-US" and changed it all into "en-GB". However, after a restart and refresh nothing happened.

    Do you know how this should be done? Or do you know a workaround to do this through the CSL editor anyway?

    Thanks in advance

    Willem
  • damnation
    edited May 30, 2019
    This can easily be done within your CSL style, no need to change the language of your actual Zotero. (see the CSL Spec: http://docs.citationstyles.org/en/stable/specification.html#styles-structure)
    In the second line of code you can add a default locale. This comes in handy for switching dates automatically from GB to US date styles, for example.
    However, if your whole style is more in a US style and you want a different date style you can move those date-parts up or down and change the pre/suffixes to get what you want.
    (If you´re struggling, upload your code to pastebin or hastebin and share the link here).
  • willem.swinnen
    Thank you for your quick and superbe reply, Damnation. And also for your extended support, in case I'd be stuck on this. But hey, I managed! I followed your lead and it comes out perfect. For others who might land here. This is what I've added at the end of the second line (right above "info"):
    default-locale="en-GB">
  • willem.swinnen
    I have noticed a side effect. en-GB uses single quotes, instead of double quotes. I did not immediately found a way to get the double quotes back (other than going back to another en locale, but that undoes the preferred date notation).

    Is there perhaps a simple line I could add in the CSL code to get double quotes, despite the en-GB locale?

    Thanks in advance.
  • willem.swinnen
    edited June 5, 2019
    I've just tried the following addition in the terms section:

    term name="open-quote">“
    term name="close-quote">”

    (I cannot add the exact line here, since text between <> seams to disappear)

    It does the trick. Beter suggestions are of course welcome.
  • adamsmith
    Given that you really want US behavior overall (see your other question re: abbreviations, e.g.), I'd recommend instead changing the date format in the locale in the style. You can use the global locale files as a template:
    https://github.com/citation-style-language/locales/blob/master/locales-en-US.xml
    and
    https://github.com/citation-style-language/locales/blob/master/locales-en-GB.xml
  • willem.swinnen
    Thanks for the hint, Adam ;-). I was not aware of the option to change the date format. I'll check it out.
  • willem.swinnen
    That was a wonderful suggestion, Adam. As simple as it gets. I copied the "date form"-code in the locale section of my CSL document (and removed in the second line the "default-locale="en-GB"" I added earlier, which was nevertheless a very smart trick from Damnation). Done.

    For people who are dealing with the same issue, this is what I added above the line /locale> (put a < before every line):

    date form="text">
    date-part name="day" suffix=" "/>
    date-part name="month" suffix=" "/>
    date-part name="year"/>
    /date>
    date form="numeric">
    date-part name="day" form="numeric-leading-zeros" suffix="/"/>
    date-part name="month" form="numeric-leading-zeros" suffix="/"/>
    date-part name="year"/>
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