"e.g." button for in-text citation?

Heinrich Mallison
I frequently need to cite one or two (or more - sigh!) papers as examples for something (a method or application of a technique). So my in-text citaions often read:

"has been applied successfully (e.g., Maganaris 2001; Fields et al. 2003a, b)."

Each time I need to go to the Editor and add the "e.g., ". That's OK, but it means that the in-text citation doesn't get updated anymore, which can be annoying. Thus:

Is it possible to have a feature that adds a leading "e.g., " to the text in the parentheses for an in-text citation? I imagine a simple button that is labeled "e.g.," - if I click it the text "e.g., " will be added automatically between the "(" and the first paper.

any hope??????
  • fbennett
    Use the "prefix" field in the popup, instead of editing the citation itself.
  • Heinrich Mallison
    edited June 27, 2011
    ah, great! That's half the rent.....

    Thanks a lot! I'm an idiot ;)

    still, this means I have to type in the text each and every time. There are very few texts usually used in this place, so I still think it would be a good idea to pre-code them.
  • bdarcus
    still, this means I have to type in the text each and every time. There are very few texts usually used in this place, so I still think it would be a good idea to pre-code them.

    1. two letters and some punctuation?

    2. if you're bothered by this, you're probably overusing this pattern and annoying your readers

    3. there are different conventions for this case ("cf", "see", etc.) so it may not be so straightforward

    4. it'd substantially change how things work internally (the styling language doesn't have this feature)

    5. still, it's probably worth considering if there's broad support for it (but there are probably more important gaps)

  • adamsmith
    I don't see how this is worth it - at a minimum "e.g." would have to be selected from a dropdown menu (including cf, see etc. as bdarcus points out)- and in the time that is done I've definitely typed it.
    I think the csl issue is secondary - the plugin could just write "e.g." as a prefix - but that brings us to the next issue - we'd have to localize this (which sounds like a nightmare), otherwise we're just wasting the gui space of non-English users, of which there are plenty.
  • Heinrich Mallison
    well, if it is difficult to implement, it's not worth the hassle.
  • Gracile
    I like adamsmith's idea. But we can make things simpler with a list of terms created by each user for its own need. It's very basic but will address the "issue" flexibly. IMO, we don't need localization here.
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