Ancient documents with No Date

Grumpy64
I am referencing Some Ancient Documents in SBL format. In the note it does not use a date for these types of documents, however, if I leave the date field blank Zotero inserts n.d. into the note. Is there a way to suppress this behavior? The format should simply be:

Author, Title Page.

Zotero formats it like this

Author, Title, n.d., Page.

I can go in and manually edit these out in the final version of the paper if I have to, but I was looking for another alternative so that I didn't have to do the manual edit.
  • damnation
    edited April 6, 2022
    I don't think there is a solution that doesn't involve editing the citation style.
    But that change is easy to make. If you want, closer to you handing in, let us know and we give you such a style. I don't want to make the edit now as the style might get updated in the meantime.
  • AbeJellinek
    (I think that the style's current behavior is incorrect and this change should be made more generally - I don't have access to it, but SBL 2e apparently says that "The use of n.d. (no date) in place of the year in the publication details should be avoided.")
  • Grumpy64
    Abe your right, but I am not completely sure if this is applicable in all situations where do date is given. The full section is quoted below. I am not sure who to contact to change the actual published style sheet if this is the case.

    6.1.4.5 Date

    The use of n.d. (no date) in place of the year in the publication details should be avoided. In the case of unpublished manuscripts, use the date of the version consulted or the last-modified date in the case of electronic files. Use forthcoming for manuscripts under contract but not yet published (§6.2.19). Manuscripts not under contract are treated as unpublished manuscripts.


    SBL Press, The SBL Handbook of Style, Second Edition. (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2014), 83.
  • adamsmith
    @dstark do you have a sense of what SBL expects when dates are missing?
  • dstark
    @Grumpy64, specifically what ancient documents (or collections of them) are you wanting to cite? That would be helpful in thinking through the SBL Handbook-Zotero interaction.

    @adamsmith, it looks to me like §6.1.4.5 that @Grumpy64 quotes above is the pertinent guidance. But it's not clear to me whether the first sentence means "never use n.d." or "do your best to avoid it unless absolutely necessary."

    If the first interpretation is the case, it's not clear to me whether SBL style wants to have anything replace it (e.g., to indicate that the information isn't available in distinction from its just having been left out). In support of the second interpretation (n.d. is permissible when it can't be avoided), however, is perhaps §8.1.3, which includes n.d. in the list of technical abbreviations, although this list is far from prescriptive (§8).

    Apart from reaching out to the press directly (and they've not been as responsive of late), my inclination is that the second interpretation (n.d. is permissible if unavoidable) is better. But it could easily go the other way too.
  • adamsmith
    I'd agree that the 2nd interpretation is likely right -- it's also more closely aligned to the Chicago Manual
  • Grumpy64
    @dstark @adamsmith I have to agree, I see both interpretations of the instruction.
  • Grumpy64
    edited April 7, 2022
    @dstark I am looking at Section 6.4.5 ANF and NPNF, First and Second Series of SBL2 and it gives this example:

    14. The Clementine Homilies 1.3 (ANF 8:223).
    Mine come out looking like this:

    Origen, Commentarii in Evangelium Joannis, n.d., 6.36 (ANF 9.377), Logos Bible Software.

    Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, n.d., 3.15 (NPNF2 1.147, Logos Bible Software.
    This is really a rabbit trail for me I can edit it when finished with the paper, but its just annoying and it will be a very repetitive fix. I did find solutions to the spacing in the bibliography, and not using ibid. (which may not be an SBL2 issue, but it is in our Schools style manual) so I fixed it (just hoping my fix did not break something else). I think I have found where to fix this issue just not seeing the how jumping out at me.
  • Grumpy64
    @dstark As a side note (Not Zotero related) the SBL2 guidance on using primary sources is confusing. At one point they recommend using parenthetical citations similar to how one handles biblical text. Then in the example, I show above in section 6.4.5 and other examples in this section they show a footnote as an example. I tried it both ways as the parenthetical citation would mean not having to worry about how Zotero handles the reference but the double parenthesis just looked off and made the reading more clumsy having the longer parenthetical citation. Since my professor didn't care as long as there was consistency I chose to use footnotes. Thus I now find myself trying to fix the n.d. issue.
  • Grumpy64
    edited April 7, 2022
    This is the section that I think is responsible for the behavior, just not sure what to do to change it. When I look at other style sheets that don't do the behavior I cannot find anything similar to this.


    <else>
    <text term="no date" form="short"/>
    </else>


    So if I comment out the "text" statement the style responds appropriately. Just not sure if there may be a better way to do it for example if there is no publishing data at all then don't use the n.d. format. Just not sure how t do that, or at this point if it is even worth doing, just make a down and dirty fix and let someone else figure out if the fix breaks something else.
  • Grumpy64
    What I really need is another conditional right before this else statement. That conditional would check to see if either the location or publisher field was not blank. If either field contains data and then calling the "no date" term is appropriate. If both of these test fields are blank as well as the date field then something to say leave it blank, which is in effect what I did when I commented out the "text" item. I am thinking there needs to be a more elegant way than commenting this out but I have not found it yet.
  • Grumpy64
    So this is my current solution. In the macro I have not touched the first <if /> statement. That should as I read it do its thing as long as there is a date to work with. Failing a date then it checks if there is any other publisher information, if it finds any it returns the n.d. format as it did before. If it finds neither publisher or location information then it skips the date as well. This may break some items that have no publisher data but may be desiring the "n.d." notation but I cannot think of them right now. I wish I had a more elegant solution then just commenting out the "no date" item in the else field but I couldn't find one in the documentation and it seems to work (if anyone has suggestions I am open to them.)


    <macro name="issued">
    <choose>
    <if variable="issued">
    <choose>
    <if type="graphic report" match="any">
    <date variable="issued">
    <date-part name="month" suffix=" "/>
    <date-part name="day" suffix=", "/>
    <date-part name="year"/>
    </date>
    </if>
    <else-if type="legal_case">
    <text variable="authority" suffix=" "/>
    <date variable="issued">
    <date-part name="year"/>
    </date>
    </else-if>
    <else-if type="bill book chapter graphic legal_case legislation motion_picture paper-conference report song thesis article-journal" match="any">
    <date variable="issued">
    <date-part name="year"/>
    </date>
    </else-if>
    <else>
    <date variable="issued">
    <date-part name="day" suffix=" "/>
    <date-part name="month" suffix=" "/>
    <date-part name="year"/>
    </date>
    </else>
    </choose>
    </if>
    <else-if variable="publisher-place publisher" match="any">
    <text term="no date" form="short"/>
    </else-if>
    <else>
    <!-- text term="no date" form="short"/ -->
    </else>
    </choose>
    </macro>
  • dstark
    @Grumpy64, if you use "Annote: " in Extra, you can follow that up with "ANF" "NPNF 1/" or "NPNF 2/" and get the appropriate custom abbreviation that SBL style is wanting for these sources. You can then add the particular source from those works (e.g., Clementine Homilies, Eusebius, Origen as above) either outside the citation or in the prefix field for the citation. That will let you get just the one source in the bibliography but also reflect the proper format in the notes.
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