Sonny Software

Jon wrote:I can have Bookends automatically convert double quote marks to apostrophes (when it sees that you have a quote mark in the format before the title), but would anyone object? Might that cause problems for you?

As long as such functionality is optional (via the preferences, for instance) I see nothing wrong with it. I would prefer not to have it hard-wired though: as a LaTeX/BibLaTeX user, I rely on the \mkbibquote command to have such quotation marks automatically and correctly rendered depending on the language, context, and other factors, so I would prefer Bookends to stay out of the way.

By the way, this is not a very simple issue to address in the general case. See, for example, the documentation of the "csquotes" and "BibLaTeX" packages for a glimpse at the complexities involved.

Jon,

I would like to also inquire why is it that when a quotation is part of the title the output order is incorrect. I have bookends set to follow alphabetically Author,Title.

(1) In the following example the first mention of the word Jew should have single quotation to differentiate it from the second mention of Jew. The order I should get is the following:

Reinhartz, Adele. Cast out of the Covenant: Jews and Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John. Lanham, MD: Fortress Academic, 2018.
———. “'Jews' and Jews in the Fourth Gospel.” In Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel, edited by Reimund Bieringer, et al., 213–27. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001.

(2) However, the order I get is:

Reinhartz, Adele. “‘Jews’ and Jews in the Fourth Gospel.” In Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel, edited by Reimund Bieringer, et al., 213–27. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001.
———. Cast out of the Covenant: Jews and Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John. Lanham, MD: Fortress Academic, 2018.

As you can see the book Cast of of the Covenant should be listed before the journal article by the same author because it is alphabetically prior. But this does not happen unless I write the title of the journal article without any quotations. See below number 3 for this

(3) Correct order when no quotation is added. But the quotation is an essential part of the title.

Reinhartz, Adele. Cast out of the Covenant: Jews and Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John. Lanham, MD: Fortress Academic, 2018.
———. “'Jews and Jews in the Fourth Gospel.” In Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel, edited by Reimund Bieringer, et al., 213–27. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001.

I hope this makes sense. I bet there is a simple solution that I am not seeing.

Thanks for your help!

Moises

The sort is of the reference metadata in your library, not the formatted bibliography items. Without seeing the references themselves I can't be sure, but I'm guessing you have normal (not smart) quote mark at the beginning of the title field and, as set in preferences, Bookends is converting it to a smart quote when the reference is formatted. The sort recognizes punctuation, and " sorts before C. It may be that if you put a smart quote (Option-[) at the beginning of the title you'll get the sort order you want.

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon,

Thank you for your reply. Yes, in the preferences Bookends is set to output smart quotes in English. I have followed your suggestion. Using Option + ] I have inserted a single smart quotation at the beginning of the title (and Option + Shift + ] to close the quotation). But this has not fixed the ordering issue. I'll just fix it manually. Thanks for your help!

Moises

You're right. It looks like the database engine is treating any punctuation as lesser than (preceding) any letter. Since this appears to be a rare problem, fixing it manually is probably the easiest thing to do. If it were more common, you could create a Type in which the format applied the quote marks before and after the title. But for this particular reference I'm afraid you'd still have the issue with the single apostrophe (or single quote mark) in from of the first characters. Sorry.

Jon
Sonny Software