New Citation Style and CSL problems

I am trying to develop a new Citation style for the repository for the writers of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly. All was going well, until I realized that bibliography citations have a specific quirk: items are sorted by author's last name, but all authors are listed as firstname-lastname; no author is ever listed as lastname-firstname.

In the syntax guide I found this line:

name-as-sort-order - determines the order of last name and first name(initials). No entry has all authors as firstname-lastname, “first” displays only the first author as lastname-firstname, “all” displays all authors as lastname-firstname.

Does this mean that the current CSL language does not allow me to make an output in CBQ bibliographic style?
  • Try removing the name-as-sort-order attribute entirely (you don't want it as sort order; you want as display order).
  • edited February 8, 2011
    "No entry has all authors as firstname-lastname"
    that should do what you want, no? They'd still be ordered by last names if you use
    <sort>
    <key macro="author"/>

    But I took a quick look CBQ doesn't have a bibliography, so you're just looking at in text citations in footnotes - would you really want to sort those? That seems odd - though certainly possible with Zotero.
    Take a look at the style for SBL, which should pretty much be what you want anyway.

    Edit: to avoid confusion: bdarcus and I are saying the same thing in different words.
  • Thank you, bdarcus - that worked.
    @adamsmith - The CBQ style guide from their website does not specifically lay down the rules for a bibliography, but I am a student at Catholic Uni America, and am required to use the CBQ style for my dissertation, which does require a bibliography. And if you look at the examples they give, the format is used both for footnotes and bibliography.
  • It's up to you, but I would really double check this. The style guide doesn't mention a bibliography (because CBQ doesn't print bibliographies), but refers to the Chicago Manual of style as the point of reference for everything not covered - in fact, everything else in the style looks like a CMoS variant - and CMoS has a different format for bibliography and notes. That, and a bibliography that doesn't start with the letters its ordered by looks very confusing...
    Point being, just make sure that's really what's required, because it would be a very odd requirement.
  • I have double checked this, and have already been disciplined by my dissertation committee for printing authors names as lastname-firstname.

    I do realize that the contributors guide does not specifically mention a bibliography. In fact, bibliographic style only applies to the few students that are at CUA, writing dissertations for the Ph.D. in Biblical studies - that is, all three of us. (actually, the number is closer to 15 or 20). Becuase the rules don't apply to contributors to the journal, but only to students at the university, they don't publish a specific section in the style guide for the Bibliography, but trust me, the Bibliography section is as I have described it. One of the major reasons that I am undertaking the project of editing the CSL style is because the actual rules that I have to live by aren't really published.

    The fallback style for the dissertation is actually Turabian (which is, I believe, only a slight modification of Chicago); but I have been instructed to override Turabian with the CBQ style wherever they conflict, and this includes the firstname-lastname directive for my bibliography (even though that directive isn't specified that it applies to bibliographies). It is unfortunately the case that the expectations of the CBQ exceed what the published expectations are; hence my difficulty.

    However, as I've been using Zotero, I have found that the program has lightened my load significantly, and I hope to pass on this tool to my fellow students without making them pay for a more expensive program.

    Thank you for your help, and your comments have allowed me to make the output as it should be for my style. I am close to having the CBQ style (plus bibliography for dissertations) complete, and then I shall submit it to the repository.

    Nathan LaMontagne
  • ok - glad to hear that. Just making sure.
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