Suppress final punctuation

brkim
When I am embedding footnote citations in a larger discussion, it would be nice if I could check an option in the "Add/Edit Citation" dialogue box that would allow me to suppress the final punctuation. That would allow me, for example, to say:

FIRST_CITATION; cf. SECOND_CITATION

without it automatically putting in a period before my semicolon.
  • adamsmith
    maybe I'm not understanding this correctly, but what about the multiple sources function?
  • brkim
    The multiple sources function puts a semicolon after each citation except the last, but if I want to insert a "cf.", then I have to do it inside the citation, where it will get overwritten if the citation refreshes. I would prefer to have separate citations, suppress the ending punctuation on the first, and then put "; cf. " between the citations.

    What I am asking for would also be helpful for citations inside of parentheses (where the final period would go after the close paren) and when following a citation with a comma and an explanatory note.
  • adamsmith
    use prefix and suffix for explanatory notes - they can be applied individually to every item in a multiple source citation: In your example above, e.g. you would select both citations in the multiple source dialogue, then, still in the dialogue, highlight the second one and put "cf. " in the prefix field.

    You can also use prefix/suffix for parentheses, which will put the period after the citaiton.
  • brkim
    Oh, thanks!
  • brkim
    There are still places where suppressing final punctuation would be helpful for me, e.g.:

    Other interpretive options are OPTION_1 (so CITATION1) or OPTION_2 (so CITATION2).

    I can't suppress the period following CITATION1, even if I put the ) in the suffix box.

    Your fix solved the vast majority of my problems, though.
  • FiachraByrne
    Agree that this would be a great feature in the humanities where you might in a footnote discuss multiple sources and where it would at times be useful to include several references in a single sentence
  • megabert
    I concur!
  • megabert
    Also, this here doesn’t suppress the semicolon in my case: "select both citations in the multiple source dialogue, then, still in the dialogue, highlight the second one and put "cf. " in the prefix field.” What am I doing wrong? I use SBL full notes in footnotes on neo office.
  • megabert
    And Chicago full note does the same, I just checked.
  • fbennett
    Joining punctuation is adaptive, but changes are triggered by adjoining punctuation marks. You could write this in the prefix field of the next citation to get a comma instead of a semicolon: 
    , cf.
    Alternatively, you could put this in the suffix field of the preceding cite to eliminate joining punctuation, because the trailing period would trump the semicolon: 
    cf.
    In Multilingual Zotero (MLZ), I recently added a toggle to suppress trailing punctuation in note styles. The citation processor is now capable of doing that; if there is demand, I could submit a pull request, so the core developers can take a look at it.
  • megabert
    Thanks - I think my problem is that I want to write something else than cf.

    Al-Ramahi, “Competing Rationalities,” 202; quoting Daniel G. Bates and Amal Rassam, Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East (Prentice Hall, 2001), 245.

    The semicolon after 202 is my problem.

    I’d say there is demand for what you’re suggesting, btw.!
  • megabert
    No, wait, “, quoting” as prefix in second cite did it, great, thanks! (Sorry, I’m not dumb but my doc is so big now that every new thing I try takes ages, so I write blog posts while waiting for the next zotero refresh).

    Would still like to see that suppress button as a feature in main zotero.
  • Gracile
    @fbennett
    Joining punctuation is adaptive, but changes are triggered by adjoining punctuation marks.
    When was this added ?
    The citation processor is now capable of doing that; if there is demand, I could submit a pull request, so the core developers can take a look at it.
    Yes, please !
  • fbennett
    The main commit to the processor code went in on June 1 this year. It was part of the solution to some long-standing processor issues reported by Sebastian. I think the adaptive punctuation code was included in a Zotero release in September.

    I'll work on a pull request against the Zotero master for suppression of trailing punctuation. It involves a string of changes, and some additions to the UI; I'm not sure how it will be received by the development team, but the best way to find out will be to put the code forward.
  • aurimas
    I'm still not seeing a case where suppressing the terminal punctuation is necessary, as opposed to replacing the terminal/joining punctuation with user provided punctuation.
  • fbennett
    edited October 12, 2014
    @gracile: Before I do that ... (and as aurimas has already noticed) ... the post you link to above is about adaptive punctuation (i.e. adjusting citations that ordinarily use a comma as inter-cite delimiter to use a semicolon instead, because page pinpoints are also set off from their companion cite with a comma).

    If style-supplied terminal punctuation is also an issue, could you outline the context?
  • Gracile
    edited October 13, 2014
    Sorry I misunderstood !
    I'm still not seeing a case where suppressing the terminal punctuation is necessary,
    I agree.
    as opposed to replacing the terminal/joining punctuation with user provided punctuation.
    Yes, but one might want to replace the joining punctuation with non-punctuation characters, e.g. "and" (and localized versions) ? [Edit: not sure about that, so the adaptive punctuation you've implemented in June is sufficient.]
  • aurimas
    Yes, but one might want to replace the joining punctuation with non-punctuation characters, e.g. "and" (and localized versions) ?
    Fair point, but that seems like something that should be defined in a style, no? How is the delimiter determined currently? In CMoS, I only see semicolon on citation -> layout, which should do something else. Is it hard-coded?

    The reason being that if a user sets a citation delimiter in the prefix and then removes the first citation (out of two), the delimiter would make no sense.
  • fbennett
    It seems to me that when we start thinking about eliminating delimiting punctuation altogether, that's more like straight discursive writing (in footnotes) with citations interspersed.

    Writing in that mode will not map well to author-date styles anyway, so it may be more comfortable to just create footnotes manually and insert citations into the text. That's the style of writing that led me to implement suppression of trailing punctuation in MLZ; otherwise, you have to choose between manually adding a terminal period to many cites, or manually removing it from many others.

    So I think there is a use case for suppression of terminal punctuation; I'm just not sure whether most users would feel the added UI complexity is worth the candle. For MLZ, which has a growing user base in law, I decided that it was worth it.
  • fbennett
    aurimas writes:
    In CMoS, I only see semicolon on citation -> layout, which should do something else. Is it hard-coded?
    That's the normal coding pattern, as far as I know; it's the inter-cite delimiter, and it's hard-coded in CSL. I think what Gracile means is that it might be nice to have "and" in a prefix replace a preceding delimiter with a bare space. If that were set up, then the system should also recognize "localized versions" of "and" (that is, "and" in several languages).

    That would probably turn out to be fragile, though; providing for the suppression of terminal punctuation, so that users can create footnotes manually and get the results they expect, seems like a simpler and more intuitive solution.
  • aurimas
    Frank, could you answer this:
    How is the delimiter determined currently? In CMoS, I only see semicolon on citation -> layout, which should do something else. Is it hard-coded?
    CMoS actually gives an example for this:
    1. Sutton, "The Analysis of Free Verse Form, Illustrated by a Reading of Whitman," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 18 (December 1959): 241--54; Fussell, "Whitman's Curious Warble: Reminiscence and Reconciliation," in The Presence of Walt Whitman, ed. R. W. B. Lewis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 28--51; Coffman, " ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry': A Note on the Catalog Technique in Whitman's Poetry," Modern Philology 51 (May 1954): 225--32; Coffman, "Form and Meaning in Whitman's ‘Passage to India,' "PMLA 70 (June 1955): 337--49; Rountree, "Whitman's Indirect Expression and Its Application to ‘Song of Myself,' " PMLA 73 (December 1958): 549--55; and Lovell, "Appreciating Whitman: ‘Passage to India,' "Modern Language Quarterly 21 (June 1960): 131--41.
    Note the last delimiter. I don't think CSL can do this correctly, can it?
  • aurimas
    That's the normal coding pattern, as far as I know; it's the inter-cite delimiter, and it's hard-coded in CSL.
    Of course. Should read the spec more carefully. Nonetheless, above observation stands.
  • aurimas
    I think what Gracile means is that it might be nice to have "and" in a prefix replace a preceding delimiter with a bare space. If that were set up, then the system should also recognize "localized versions" of "and" (that is, "and" in several languages).(Sorry for the spam) Well, but that's precisely what I was getting at. The "and" _only_ makes sense as a delimiter and not as a prefix and it typically only makes sense as the final delimiter, so adding/removing references from an existing list would break this. My point is that this shouldn't be left up to the user.
    It seems to me that when we start thinking about eliminating delimiting punctuation altogether, that's more like straight discursive writing (in footnotes) with citations interspersed.

    Writing in that mode will not map well to author-date styles anyway, so it may be more comfortable to just create footnotes manually and insert citations into the text. That's the style of writing that led me to implement suppression of trailing punctuation in MLZ; otherwise, you have to choose between manually adding a terminal period to many cites, or manually removing it from many others.
    Can you give an example of this? I don't do such writing, so I'm just trying to understand what we're getting at here.
  • fbennett
    Yes (or "No", depending on your language domain :) it can't. You would have to do that by setting "and" as a prefix on the final cite.

    No one has ever complained about that, though, and it's probably not worth automating. Some authors might want to use a different transition, and some styles (looking at you, Bluebook) have a fixed list of "signals." Here's a link to a plugin I built to address the latter:

    http://fbennett.github.io/bluebook-signals-for-zotero/

    Details of the signals are given in Rule 27, at pages 83-90 of the Bluebook 10th edition (now known to be free of copyright, thanks to careful research by Christopher Sprigman at NYU). Read it and weep. :-)
  • fbennett
    I'll dig out some sample footnotes from legal writing. It's a very different style from the sciences -- in part, I think, because legal authors don't pay for publication.
  • fbennett
    edited October 13, 2014
    Here's a pretty typical example of a note containing an indented quote (drawn from Waldron, Jeremy. “Torture and Positive Law: Jurisprudence for the White House.” Columbia Law Review 105, no. 6 (October 1, 2005): 1681–1750).

    It would be possible to write it by creating a footnote, then (1) inserting the first citation and (2) adding the parenthetical as a suffix, then (3) writing the explanatory note and quotation (i.e. from "This characterization"), followed by (4) the closing cite ... but something like this is easier to handle if the first citation can be inserted without terminal punctuation -- then it's just a run of text with a couple of one-click citation inserts.

    67. See Frank Rich, The War's Lost Weekend, N.Y. Times, May 9, 2004, § 2, at 1 ("[A] former Army interrogation instructor, Tony Robinson, showed up on [a] Fox show ... to assert that the prison photos did not show torture. 'Frat hazing is worse than this,' the self- styled expert said."). This characterization was seconded by Rush Limbaugh, who said on his radio program:
    "This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we're going to ruin people's lives over it, and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day.... You ever heard of emotional release?"
    Cathy Young, Cruelty Cuts Across Nationality, Gender Lines, Boston Globe, May 10, 2004, at A15.
  • zuphilip
    Here is another example from philosophy: Online available PDF. Just look at the footnotes on the first pages. Please note, also this is dissertation, I have seem the same style in journal articles (but most of these are behind a pay-wall). I guess it depends on the discipline one is writing. See also this related discussion in another style.
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