Simple Citation Style WITH Footnotes

mfgassi
Hey everybody,

I am from Germany and have troubles finding a proper citation style for my scientific needs (I am currently writing my master's thesis in European Union Studies). The truth is, German and English academic traditions differ a bunch. Also, the German source citation styles I find on the Zotero homepage are modelled after the English tradition.

So, after spending the last three hours looking and trying to familiarize myself with creating my own CLS file proper - in which I furiously failed - I decided to turn to this forum to get some help.

What am I looking for? I want a simple citation style WITH footnotes (that is important). The Bibliography can look whatever way (although I would prefer Author(s) (year) Title: subtitle etc.) BUT in the footnotes I would JUST like to have the following information:

Author(s) (Year) cited page(s)

If the style would recognize if two consecutive footnotes have the same bibliographic source, it would be great if it would prompt

ibidem [in italic] cited page(s)

but that's just wishful thinking, I guess :o)

I dont know if this is the right place to raise this question. Also, I am afraid people might interpret me as being too brazen to enter a wish-list for my own citation style. I can only reemphasize: I am a newbie and desperate ;o)

So, if anybody with cls-programming skills might find it in his/her heart to help me for the sake of transatlantic relations, I would GREATLY appreciate!

Kindest regards from Germany to everybody who reads this!
Markus
«13
  • bdarcus
    Markus, can you read through this and repost with appropriate additional information? We need you to find an existing style from the repository that is as close to possible to what you want (is there really not one that works for you?), and then the exact changes you need from that.
  • adamsmith
    this is actually not so hard, since you don't pose a lot of requirements.
    I would suggest you start from the chicago style with full note and bibliography, which is one of the best styles around.
    See here for general instructions on how to edit and install a custom style:
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/5104/modifying-word-plugin-using-journal-abbreviation-instead-of-publication-name/#Item_2

    You just need to do two things:
    first, Chicago often gives the full date, you just want the year.

    find the lengthy section starting with:

    <macro name="issued">

    and take out almost everything (including all the "if" "else" and "choose") so that you are left with:
    <macro name="issued">
    <date variable="issued">
    <date-part name="year"/>
    </date>
    </macro>


    Number two - reduce the "full note" to author (date) format.
    Once again, this means taking out a lot.


    find this part:
    <group delimiter=", ">
    <text macro="contributors-note"/>
    <text macro="title-note"/>
    <text macro="description-note"/>
    <text macro="secondary-contributors-note"/>
    <text macro="container-title-note"/>
    <text macro="container-contributors-note"/>
    </group>
    <text macro="locators-note"/>
    <text macro="collection-title" prefix=", "/>
    <text macro="issue-note"/>
    <text macro="locators-newspaper" prefix=", "/>
    <text macro="point-locators"/>
    <text macro="access-note" prefix=", "/>

    and reduce it to:


    <text macro="contributors-note" />
    <text macro="issue-note"/>
    <text macro="point-locators"/>

    You also need to find this:
    <else-if position="subsequent">
    <group delimiter=", ">
    <text macro="contributors-short"/>
    <text macro="title-short"/>
    <text macro="point-locators-subsequent"/>
    </group>

    and take out the <text macro="title-short"/> line.

    If you don't like the way the authors are cited, e.g. if you only want last names,
    you could just take the author short macro from another style, e.g. this from APSA and put it somewhere in the top part of the document (between two macros so after a line that reads </macro>:

    <macro name="author-short">
    <names variable="author">
    <name form="short" and="text" delimiter=", " initialize-with=". "/>
    <substitute>
    <names variable="editor"/>
    <names variable="translator"/>
    <text variable="title"/>
    </substitute>
    </names>
    </macro>
    and then change the
    <text macro="contributors-note" /> line to
    <text macro="author-short" />
  • bdarcus
    Yo, adam, what happened to the "I should probably add these styles myself" comment from a few days ago?

    :-)

    I, unfortunately, don't have time to do it today.
  • adamsmith
    I'll be happy to add this but a) I want to make sure it's right (i.e. what Markus wants) and b) I don't have a name for it :-)
  • mfgassi
    Dear Mr. Smith,
    dear bdarcus,

    thank you SOOOO much for your help!

    Before I give it a try, though, one more question: Actually, most styles with in-text citations would work perfect for me (e.g. Smith and Williams 1980:40-42). I just need this citation in the footnote.

    Is there a way that I take one of those styles (really whatever... I guess the Chicago Styles are paramount, so are the Harvard reference styles...) and just take one boolean operator at the beginning to one or zero and it will flip that style from in-text citations to footnotes?

    Thanks again, guys! Danke!
    Markus

    P.S.: We can then call this style: Markus' style, because it is relly just me using this then, I guess. (Still, it is a fully-fledged citation style since every bit of information can be unrevoquably traced back to its origin ;o)
  • adamsmith
    Markus - yes - to switch from in-text to footnotes you just have to change the second line of the .csl:
    <style xmlns="http://purl.org/net/xbiblio/csl" xml:lang="en" class="in-text" >
    the last part would be class="note"

    Since in-text style put ( ) around their citations you would also have to find the corresponding section in the code ( usually something like: <layout prefix="(" suffix=")" delimiter="; "> )
    and take them out.

    The reason I suggested going the other way is that the Chicago full note style also does all the ibid. stuff you wanted, but either way works fine.

    I wouldn't put this modified style in the repository, that doesn't make sense to me for something that's pretty ideosyncratic. If, on the other hand, there's a whole department/Fakultät at a German U. that require this, it might be worthwhile.
  • recinuk
    I found this thread while looking for a simple author-date footnote style for my doctoral thesis (United Kingdom, humanities). I'm so glad you suggested it, Markus.

    Many thanks to adamsmith for your helpful comments. I edited the Chicago Author-Date style to change it from intext to footnotes and it worked beautifully. However, as you point out, the "ibid" function does not work that way.

    Unfortunately, I cannot get the edited version of the Chicago Style Full Note with Bibliography to install. (I edited it based on this thread and http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/5104/modifying-word-plugin-using-journal-abbreviation-instead-of-publication-name/#Item_2). When I try to open the .csl file in Firefox using "open file" I get an error message saing it is not "a valid csl file." (I edited it in notepad and used "show file extensions" to manually change the .txt extension to .csl)

    Any suggestions would be most welcome!
  • RintzeRintze
    Try validating your style (Validator.nu might be the simplest option).

    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/creating_citation_styles#xml_validation
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/6122/tweaks-to-an-existing-style/?Focus=26586#Comment_26586
  • bdarcus
    I''m going to ask a basic question: why on earth are you two doing this? Why put author-date citations in footnotes??
  • adamsmith
    you have no idea about the crazyness some citation styles ask for...
    In the German case I speak from experience.
  • Wits
    I, too, am in need of the author-date footnote style that Markus describes, and would be overjoyed if some kind soul could add it into the repository. This style is very common in Finland, and I know for sure that at least the humanists and social scientists both in my university (Turku) and in Helsinki use it extensively. I wouldn't know what to call it; maybe just focus on function (Author-date in footnotes with bibliography).

    I have tried to follow these instructions on editing the Chicago full note style (thank you for the instructions, mate!), but I can't get it right. It always keeps adding some silly things like the publisher into some of the footnotes.

    I also tried editing the Chicago author-date-style, which is very close to what I need, but it won't install and I don't understand the validation thing. Even if I managed to change it into a footnote style, I would still need to remove the parentheses that it puts around the references. This is because I want to be able to add my own comments after or before the thing without it looking stupid. What I want is: "As Bäckstrand, 224-225, points out, thjabba jabba." This is, in my mind, the whole point of footnotes: being able to comment on your sources in a way that doesn't mess your body text up. At the moment I'm using Chicago note with bibliography, but I would rather have it show the year of publication than the short title of the work in question.
  • adamsmith
    I won't have time to work on that in the near future, but also I don't understand exactly what you want.
    Couldn't you get what you want by using a simple footnote style (maybe adding in a year instead of the short title) and then making ample use of the prefix/suffix features? it's exactly for the "add my own comments after or before the thing without looking stupid".
    I might be wrong, but your example isn't all that clear, unfortunately.
  • Wits
    Thank you for your answer, adamsmith.

    Sorry for being unclear in my post. I see that I actually forgot to include the year of publication in my example. Embarrassing. What I want in the footnote is this, as in Markus' case:

    Author(s) (Year) cited page(s)

    The specifics of the bibliography are not that important as long as one is produced.

    I think you are right about using a simple footnote style. I tried editing the Chicago note with bibliography style to make it show year of publication instead of the short title, but failed miserably. Properly editing the styles, even with your excellent instructions, proved insurmountable to a complete code-ignoramus like myself.

    I'll try contacting the people who posted above to see if I could get the styles they perhaps managed to put together.
  • adamsmith
    Hey, if you find this part in Chicago (note with Bibliography)
    <group delimiter=", ">
    <text macro="contributors-short"/>
    <text macro="title-short"/>
    <text macro="point-locators-subsequent"/>
    </group>


    and substitute it with this:
    <group delimiter=" ">
    <text macro="contributors-short"/>
    <text macro="issued" suffix=")" prefix="("/>
    <text macro="point-locators-subsequent"/>
    </group>

    is that pretty much what you want?

    Not sure if you want to get rid of the suffix "." - that would be under the layout options a little further up.
    Final challenge is to just get the year and note the date if you want that.
    You could do that by substituting the "issued" prefix by something like:
    <date variable="issued" prefix="(" suffix=")">
    <date-part name="year"/>
    </date>

    If this is a somewhat common style, it would be great if you could link or describe some place that requires it so it can be uploaded with a useful name.
  • Wits
    Thank you! That works great. It is exactly what I need.

    One journal that uses this style is "Theo-Web. Zeitschrift für Religionspädagogik". I guess it could go into the repository by that title.

    I think it would, at some point in the future, be a good idea to categorize the repository by more criteria, so that journals and style manuals wouldn't dictate so much. Would also facilitate finding the style one needs.

    Thank you for your help, adamsmith!
  • angela
    Hi! I'm so happy I found this thread. I was also looking for a citation format like this for my MA thesis (at the New School - NYC - i.e. not in europe...). I don't think this is a strange request at all. I often want to cite the source via author w/year and page number in the footnotes, sometimes along with further commentary INSTEAD of inline in the text, which is way too cumbersome in my opinion. I changed the code like you described in the Jun 13th post, but I don't get the year - I end up with the title instead. Did i do something wrong? there seems to be more than one spot with a date variable="issued" line, do i have to change them all?

    thanks for your work, zotero is great - and would be even better with this little addendum...
  • adamsmith
    the crucial part is this:
    Hey, if you find this part in Chicago (note with Bibliography)
    <group delimiter=", ">
    <text macro="contributors-short"/>
    <text macro="title-short"/>
    <text macro="point-locators-subsequent"/>
    </group>


    and substitute it with this:
    <group delimiter=" ">
    <text macro="contributors-short"/>
    <text macro="issued" suffix=")" prefix="("/>
    <text macro="point-locators-subsequent"/>
    </group>

    this will give you author (date) in the footnote.
    Are you doing this in Chicago Note with Bibliography?
    Are you succesfully getting the file back into Zotero?
    You would not want to change the date variable="issued" line, no. It's a little unclear what you did, so it's hard to say what went wrong. The instructions above, as per Wits comments, should generally work...
  • shashj
    I have two points, and I apologize if I haven't read this closely enough.

    First, would "Chicago Manual of Style (Dated Note with Bibliography, no ibid)" be suitable for much of what is being asked for here? I spent ages hunting for something like this, and this largely works for me (apart from the "no ibid.").

    Second, as to why this style is necessary, I've seen it used in Anglo-American contexts. E.g. Eric Helleiner's book on global finance. And I recall that the journal 'International Organization' used this once. It is very clean, and allows easy commenting without the text getting lost in the titles and other details.

    You can use a author-date by manually inserting a footnote, inserting the author-date into the footnote, and then using the suffix and prefix options - I used to do this ,since I stupidly never realized that the entire point of a "note" style was that it would create the note for you...

    Thanks,
  • bdarcus
    First, would "Chicago Manual of Style (Dated Note with Bibliography, no ibid)" be suitable for much of what is being asked for here? I spent ages hunting for something like this, and this largely works for me (apart from the "no ibid.").
    Sure.
    Second, as to why this style is necessary, I've seen it used in Anglo-American contexts. E.g. Eric Helleiner's book on global finance. And I recall that the journal 'International Organization' used this once. It is very clean, and allows easy commenting without the text getting lost in the titles and other details.
    I disagree. As a reader, you're forced to look in two different places to find out the most basic bibliographic information (like title). That is a PITA.
  • shashj
    But isn't that true of inline citation? Or do you mean having to look at the bottom of the page, and then elsewhere once more? If so, that's true - but I wonder why book and journals still use it. And as I recall, isn't is the basic citation style in BibTex?
  • bdarcus
    edited October 8, 2009
    Or do you mean having to look at the bottom of the page, and then elsewhere once more?
    Yes.
    If so, that's true - but I wonder why book and journals still use it.
    There are lots of reasons why different citation styles exist (production considerations, different kinds of citation practices, ease of authoring, etc.) but not all of them are about making things clear/easy for readers.
    And as I recall, isn't is the basic citation style in BibTex?
    No. I'm not sure there is such a thing, but I'd expect if there is, it would be either a number of label style.
  • adamsmith
    I think the reason to use this type of style is a context in which you have a lot of citations from different sources, many of them annotated or multiple.
    Using full notes then would clutter the page intolerably (I hate books where FN take up half the page) and in text citations would make the text a pain to read.
    But let's face it - this is largely a matter of personal taste and journal policy.
    And on that matter, you're right, by the way, IO (i.e. the leading subfield journal in international relations and the polisci journal with the highest citation ranking) is using this style with ibid. (They refer to CMOS on unanswered questions, styleguide is here
    http://assets.cambridge.org/INO/INO_ifc.pdf )
    I'll make a style when I get a chance.
  • shashj
    Thanks - I did think it odd that such a prominent journal didn't have its own style, but I suppose that's just subfield parochialism. On a related note, do you know contexts in which an outlet uses author-date in footnotes but with brackets? And, why does the Chicago style exclude ibid.? Is that just an arbitrary convention of the parent Chicago style?
  • adamsmith
    remember that styles are mostly custom made.
    That explains why there aren't many polisci styles - I'm afaik the only political scientist contributing and I'm a comparativist.
    It also explains the lack of ibid in the CMOS style - the person who made it didn't want the ibid. The parent CMOS style does have ibid, so it's extremely easy to put pack in.
  • adamsmith
    I've added an IO style - actually quite a bit different from the existing CMOS
    Should show up in the repository soon.
  • shashj
    Thank you, that is very helpful for me.

    Rather than start a new post, perhaps I could ask a simple question here: when I switch between inline and footnote styles, is there a way for the Word plugin to know to leave a space for inline citations, but no space if it is a footnote?
  • adamsmith
    huh, interesting...
    I'll have a look at how this behaves.
    Generally it's possible for the style to insert the space - maybes someone else has some thoughts on why that may or may not be a good idea?
  • RintzeRintze
    Related: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/3759/leading-spaces-for-authorauthordatestyles/?Focus=16007#Comment_16007
  • No.10
    Hi there,

    I guess I have a similar problem, like Markus.
    I'm from Germany too, and I have to cite by footnotes like this:

    Vgl. Auto(s) (Date): S. Page - Page

    I tried hard to work in all the changes posted in this thread, but it does not work the right way. The footnotes work, but don't look like my example.
    I know what I must do to get the "Vgl. " in front, but dont know, how to set only the Date in brakes and set a "S. " before Page Number (sometimes I cite the start page an the end page, the I need something looking like "S. Page-Nr-Start - Page-Nr-End")

    Hope someone can help me?!

    Thx No.10

    <citation et-al-min="4" et-al-use-first="1" et-al-subsequent-min="4" et-al-subsequent-use-first="1" disambiguate-add-names="true">
    <layout prefix="Vgl. " suffix="." delimiter="; ">
    <choose>
    <if position="ibid-with-locator">
    <group delimiter=", ">
    <text term="ibid" text-case="capitalize-first"/>
    <text macro="point-locators-subsequent"/>
    </group>
    </if>
    <else-if position="ibid">
    <text term="ibid" text-case="capitalize-first"/>
    </else-if>
    <else-if position="subsequent">
    <group delimiter=", ">
    <group delimiter=" ">
    <text macro="contributors-short"/>
    <text macro="issued" suffix=")" prefix="("/>
    <text macro="point-locators-subsequent"/>
    </group>
    </group>
    </else-if>
    <else>
    <text macro="contributors-note" />
    <text macro="issue-note"/>
    <text macro="point-locators"/>
    </else>
    </choose>
    </layout>
    </citation>
  • No.10
    edited May 24, 2011
    fixed most points by myself.

    Anyway some different problems :-( I use the Chicago format with full notes and bibliography an changed some parts.

    I don't need ibid, so I commented it out:

    <code>
    <!--
    <if position="ibid-with-locator">
    <group delimiter=": ">
    <text term="ibid" text-case="capitalize-first"/>
    <text macro="point-locators-subsequent"/>
    </group>
    </if>
    <else-if position="ibid">
    <text term="ibid" text-case="capitalize-first"/>
    </else-if>
    -->
    </code>

    It works, but there is a little hook, as you can see here:

    Vgl. Köhler/ Küpper/ Pfingsten (2007): Sp 1965.
    Vgl. Köhler, Küpper, und Pfingsten (2007): Sp 1965.

    Why does the second footnote differ? Does anyone know?

    Also another problem is, that I can't paste a bibliography.... zotero told me, that there is no bibliography, but in the dev-tool a bibliography is shown.

    Thx for your help, No.10
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