Hi Adam, oops, sorry badly explained post, I meant to say that the years are not coming out in the right order. I've just been messing around with it there, same result using Harvard style. If I ask it to format a bibliography with 4 Franz Boas references 1905, 1909, 1930, 1940, for example, the bibliography is produced with the 1940 ref. first, then the 1909 etc. It is happening with multiple entries for all authors. Is there something I need to do?

Thanks Noksagt. I would prefer to use one of the Harvard styles if I could. I've been using Harvard Ref format 1 and though it seems to be 'Author-date' the years are all out of sync when one author has several books/papers. Is there a Harvard style that sorts 'author' then 'year' in the right numerical order and is it easy to get this into the quicklist?

I think I am going to have to modify the Harvard style (whichever I use) as well, but not sure if I am up to it technically. After advice in another post, I had a look at the creating styles documentation and it spun my head, can you tell me what's the 'easiest' way to do minor tweaks in a style, for example, can I do it in notepad or do I need other software, do minor style tweaks need the whole validation process? Thanks

Is there a Harvard style that sorts 'author' then 'year' in the right numerical order

All harvard*.csl files sort by author and then by title. There are other author-date styles that sort my author and then date of issue. Why do you think you need to use the Harvard style? Do you have a link to the guidelines you are trying to follow.

After advice in another post, I had a look at the creating styles documentation and it spun my head, can you tell me what's the 'easiest' way to do minor tweaks in a style, for example, can I do it in notepad or do I need other software, do minor style tweaks need the whole validation process?

Notepad is fine. You don't absolutely have to perform validation for quick tweaks if you know what you are doing. However, it is easy to run a validator & you really should do it before sharing the style or before asking why the style doesn't work. In the bibliography branch, there will be a sort sub-branch. change 'title' to 'issued' in that branch.

Harvard 1 should actually sort bibliography entries by author-date, and the CSL works perfectly for me. Eofios, can you confirm that you actually have the author's full name (first and last) entered identically for each of those entries?

Sean - I don't think so.
Harvard 1 sorts by author-title
and if you look at the csl code I cite above that's what it should do.

Edit: noksagt - we should clearly not be posting at the same time...

Hey, I've been experimenting with the 160 available styles all morning (GMT) to see can I find a match for my needs, but no luck, none is exactly correct. I find it really odd that the Harvard ref format 1 (author-date) doesn't in fact do 'author' then 'date' sorting. It actually instead does 'author' and then 'title' as noksagt pointed out above.

I have to say that I'm a bit frustrated, the difficulty in adapting styles is proving to be a banana skin for me.

Thanks fbennett, that was a helpful post from Adam and I did try to act on it but I'm struggling with CSL / chrome pane, that's the issue. If I could do the stuff Adam suggested my immediate problems would be resolved

Hi Adam, Noksagt or whoever is available,

Apologies I'm probably a major pain at this stage. I'll tell you where I've got to if that helps. I looked into all the styles and can see that the style I need has elements of 4 styles: Harvard format 1 and 2, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Journal of Archaeological Science.

I could work with any of these and make 5 0r 6 changes to make my ideal style but Harvard 1 or 2 is probably the closest. My stumbling block is basic what-to-do stuff. Perhaps I have missed the relevant section in the documentation, but I need basic information that I am not finding at the moment.

O.k, so I have used the Chrome test pane and can select a ref. in there to view. I have then cut and paste all the CSL stuff and put it into notepad. I can make at least one change to the bits it there (the one you told me for changing it to make it sort by 'author date') and can also handle periods and commas. I am able to change the 'title' and 'id' as you suggested in your post. Then I save this as .csl as you said in the forum post and then drop it into firefox somehow. Can you tell me how exactly this dropping bit works?

If this is the right process, and if I understand you correctly then I have to keep fiddling with chrome pane until I figure which bits of code do what, at which point I am in a position to tailor the style. Is that the idea?

Also can I grab bits of CSL from the other styles and insert them in the new Harvard author-date style that I want to create, would this work? One thing I haven't been able to figure is how to put brackets around 'ed.' and 'eds', i.e., '(ed.)' and '(eds)', when I look at styles where brackets are done the way I want, there is no actual bracket symbol that I can see in the CSL, am I missing something? Another issue for me is negating the 'pp.' from in front of page numbers. Also wanted to change 'title' to 'issued' in one of the bibiography sub-branchs as Noksagt suggested, but found about 6 'titles' there, is it the first one?

Basic/dumb questions I know, but I need basic answers where I'm at. If I can get these last couple of things and figure how to drop it into firefox or adjust the extension to allow me open it in Zotero 2.0 styles, then I think I'm almost there!

Thanks as always. I really appreciate your help.

P.S. If I can crack this I know a lot of other archaeologists in Europe that would be queuing up to use this product as in every other way its simplicity of use and functionality leaves every other referencing software I know for dead (especially if I can send them or upload the adjusted style after validation). As I say this is my only stumbling block, I find everything else really smooth.

Still stuck...

Hi Adam,

Thanks so much for that, it installed really well!

Yes you are perfectly correct, there are several journals with online style information similar to the one I have been requesting and used by many people - I've attached a few below for you to look at. The problem with them is, though the basic style is widespread, they all have very slight variations. What they do all have in common is that the are based on Harvard Ref (similar to format 1 or 2), but sort on the basis of 'Author-Date'. There are many other archaeological journals with similar styles, so the ones below are just a representative sample, I can add other links if you would like me to or if it was helpful? The style that I am tailoring is the one now used by many of the most recent archaeological books/PhD's in Britain and Ireland particularly and very similar but not precisely the same as those journal styles.

I've given the style you attached a trial run and it's almost perfect, some of the smaller tweaks I can do myself I think: periods in the wrong place [e.g. after (ed) and (eds), instead it should be a comma]; no period after the 'ed' i.e. (ed.); a comma instead of a period after the title of a book; an extra space creeping in before the place of publishing etc. As I say I think I can figure most of these out, and I am very conscious of how much time you have given me already! However, if you want to present the style for other archaeologists, I am very happy and willing to go through it thoroughly and give you more exact information and examples on these few items if it would help to clarify any issues before you upload it to the styles section (only if that's something you want)?

There is one thing that I do want to check out with you - removing the capitalization of authors names, if you could you let me know the bit I change or what I need to insert for that it would be very much appreciated.

Many thanks once again.

Kind regards,


Proceedings of the prehistoric Society - http://www.ucl.ac.uk/prehistoric/pps/ppsnote.html

Antiquity -
http://antiquity.ac.uk.libgate.library.nuigalway.ie/contribute/contribute.html

European Journal of Archaeology -
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsProdManSub.nav?prodId=Journal200966

Oxford Journal of Archaeology -
http://www.wiley.com/bw/submit.asp?ref=0262-5253&site=1

Cambridge Archaeological Journal -
http://assets.cambridge.org/CAJ/CAJ_ifc.pdf

Hi Robert - I can't get Author capitalization to change either.
None of the various combinations of
text-transform="sentence"
or
text-case="capitalize-first"

in the obvious places seems to work for me. Any suggestions from the experts?

I'm trying to make authors in caps, e.g. HENIGE DAVID P. appear in the biblio as
Henige D.P. or Henige DP

I've got it partially working with text-case="capitalize-all"
But I get:
Henige D.p. Discouraging Verification: Citation Practices across the Disciplines. Journal of Scholarly Publishing. 2006 ;37(2):33-52.

Unless there's a space between the initials (initialize-with=". "), - in which case it works as expected.

Oh, and what's the difference between text-case and text-transform?

Hi Adam,

Three problems fixed, but I still have six left. The ones I fixed were: the capitalization issue; the period that appears after (ed) and (eds), this I removed; I also changed the period after a book title to a period. So far so good. These are my remaining problems, any advice welcome!

1). I tried Nosgats advice re removing the 'P.' and 'PP.' from within in-text citations [taking out <label variable="locator" suffix="." form="short"/>] but didn't work unfortunately.

2). I have noticed that when a work has multiple authors the first author is given correctly as last name first, then initial etc, but the other authors are given initial first followed by their last name. These latter all need to be the same as the first author (i.e. last name first), but not sure how to do this.

3). When et al. appears anywhere in the bibliography it should be italicized.

4). In works from edited volumes there is a rogue extra space appearing before the city of publication. I don't know why I'm not finding it.

5). When (ed) appears in an edited volume it should have a period after the 'ed' inside the bracket, so it looks like this (ed.). (eds is fine and needs no change).

6). Finally, ideally, in a bibliographic reference to a book section, the page numbers should follow the book title after a comma as opposed to appearing at the end of the reference. Here is an example below:

Renfrew, C. 1993. Trade beyond the material. In C. Scarre & F. Healy (eds) Trade and Exchange in Prehistoric Europe, 5–16. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Wow great, thanks for the advice, will try.

3 isn't currently possible. I'll have a look at 5 and 6 later - 6 is possible, but a bit more work, so that might take a while.