Trouble with SBL Format

stevietheb · Post by **stevietheb** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 8:43 am

Howdy all...

I am using Bookends and Mellel. I have followed the "SBL Formatting Guide" to a T. But, I'm having a problem. I'm attempting to cite a book in a footnote and include a page range. The citation in Mellel looks like this:

Whittaker, 1982, #50291 @ix-xxv

When I format it, however, it comes out looking like this:

Molly Whittaker, Tatian: Oratio ad Graecos and Fragments (Clarendon: Oxford, 1982)., ix.

Notice the strange period followed by a comma after the closing parenthesis, and notice also the lack of page range. I haven't written a paper using Bookends in several months, and I haven't changed anything in between except upgrading to the latest version of Bookends.

Anybody have any idea what might be going on?[/i]

danzac · Post by **danzac** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 9:02 am

Jon, I am having the same problem, and like Stevietheb it worked fine the last time I wrote a paper (2 months ago). As far as I can tell the format is correct, the only thing I changed was in the bib&doc options under cited pages, I took out the comma from the 'before' field, which eliminated the first comma, and therefore the period in the format became a comma. but the page range is still not being produced. Danny

stevietheb · Post by **stevietheb** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 9:18 am

Hmmm...I removed the commas as per danzac's instructionsâ€”but I'm still getting the period-comma prior to the page.

Strange.

danzac · Post by **danzac** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 9:30 am

Frig, I'm an idiot. Don't bother looking into it Jon. Stephen, my apologies. Go into the formats manager and open 'SBL Bib' (NOT SBL footnote), then in the Bib&Doc options in the lower right hand corner, make sure page range is chosen, and in the 'before' field place a comma+space, and in the 'after' field place a period. This should fix your problem, and my apologies.

stevietheb · Post by **stevietheb** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 12:28 pm

This almost worked! So, now I've got my page ranges, but I've still got a rogue '.' right after the parenthesis. To fix this, I went to the SBL footnote format, and under the format for "Book" I removed the final period.

Not sure exactly what all that stuff means...so I hope I didn't break anythingâ€”but, I'm getting the text I want now.