Ignoring 'van' when Sorting Bibliography

[fitzgunnar]

When the bibliography is sorted ('alphabetized'), names like van Eemeren, di Capio and af Segerstad are sorted after van, di and af respectively, instead of after Eemeren, Capio and Segerstad.

Can this be avoided?

MagnusG!

[Jon]

No, I'm afraid not. Sorts are strictly alphanumeric.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Guest]

I'm sorry, but this should absolutely change. This is one of these anglocentric idiosyncrasies which horrify Germans, Dutch, Swedes and so on.

[Jon]

There are many new features we are working on. This is not at the top of our list, but it is something we would like to have at some point.

It would be helpful if folks who would use "German sorting" explained exactly what they want in detail. For example:

1. Should there be a user-defined list of words to ignore (e.g. "van", "von", etc.), or is the number of prefixes small enough (say, less than 25) that we could hardwire it into Bookends (making the interface simpler)?

2. Does case matter? If "van" is to be ignored, should "Van" also be ignored?

3. Are there important exceptions to the rules?

Examples would be particularly helpful...

Jon
Sonny Software

[Guest]

1. The number of similar prefixes should be rather limited. In Dutch:

- van
- de
- van de
- 't
- van der
- van het
- van 't

That's about all.

2. Case doesn't matter. These prefixes are often capitalized if they are not preceded by a given name: "Jan van Vliet", but "Van Vliet". But for the sorting of the names this makes no difference whatsoever.

3. Not that I know.

[rickl]

When the bibliography is sorted ('alphabetized'), names like van Eemeren, di Capio and af Segerstad are sorted after van, di and af respectively, instead of after Eemeren, Capio and Segerstad.

Can this be avoided?

I've always tended to think that since "van", etc, are part of the family name it's good to have them come under "v", etc, in the bibliography. Can I assume from your post that this is wrong and that I should always ignore these parts when ordering the bibliography; or are you just saying that Bookends should give the option to do either?

Thanks,
Rick

[Michael Bywater]

I would suggest exclusion codes, as in the excellent indexing program Cindex.

It uses simple rules. Text enclosed in angle brackets will print but not be sorted on. Text enclosed in curly braces will be sorted on but not printed.

E.g.:

<von und zu Thurm und >Taxis will appear as "von und zu Thurm und Taxis" but be sorted on Taxis.

{Thurm} von und zu Thurm und Taxis will appear as "von und zu Thurm und Taxis" but be sorted as "Thurm"

For indexing, where quite complex sort orders are required, this is more than enough to solve all the potential problems, so I'd imagine it would do the job for bibliographies.

[Randall Wood]

A similar issue comes up when the author is a company. The Turabian bibliography formatter outputs "Bank, The World" in the reference list for publications where I've input "The World Bank" in the author field. Leaving the author out entirely gives in-text references like ( , Jan 2005) which of course isn't good either.

The solution above would suit this problem too, I think. BibTeX allows you to have authors formatted like this:

Smith, Jones
Smith, {C. Jones}
{The World Bank}
{van der Celn}, Philipe

and so on. Hope it's not too hard to implement. On behalf of Bank, The World, it's important.

[Jon]

A similar issue comes up when the author is a company. The Turabian bibliography formatter outputs "Bank, The World" in the reference list for publications where I've input "The World Bank" in the author field. Leaving the author out entirely gives in-text references like ( , Jan 2005) which of course isn't good either.

The solution is to enter the name as

The World Bank,

(note the comma at the end). Bookends will treat it as a institutional name in this case.

Jon
Sonny Software