Sonny Software

Is there any way to code an indent into the output style?

I'm studying for my PhD comprehensive exams and hope to put all my notes together in Bookends so I'll always have 'em handy when I'm looking up articles later. What I want is basically a modified APA 5th style followed by keywords, followed by my notes.

The user guide on output formats is relatively clear, but it's a complicated thing since Bookends is so flexible. I didn't see what I was looking for. So far, I've built the following format based on the stock APA style:

a. (d). t. f, v(i~)~|~, ~p-`.`¬∆$Keywords: $k ¬∆n

This gets me very close to what I want. The only problem is that I'd prefer my notes be indented. The reference should be left-justified, with the keywords and notes set one tab in from the left margin. The above format does that, but only until the first return in the notes field. After that, the notes are left-justified. This looks remarkably bad to me.

I know I could change the indent manually in a word processor, but we're talking about notes for over 200 articles - so that's not a viable option. It'd be much simpler if there were a way to trick Bookends into doing that formatting for me.

Any suggestions?

Hi,

I think what you want is for a tab to be output before each keyword. The formatter doesn't have this kind of flexibility. A cumbersome workaround might be to preface every keyword with a special character (e.g. an asterisk -- you could do this with the Bookends find/replace) and in the word processor do find/replace, replacing the asterisk with a tab. It is crude, but should work.

Jon
Sonny Software

That's close to what I want, but not quite it.

I want my notes to be indented. Trouble is, my notes include carriage returns and blank lines - my notes are usually in list format. When I define the output format in Bookends, putting a tab before the notes field only indents first note for each reference.

Ideally, I'd be able to define an indent level in the output style. What I'd really like to do is have a 1/2 inch first line indent with a 1 inch hanging indent for the entire notes field but not the reference. Basically, I want the notes to appear underneath the reference, indented to show that they belong with the reference above.

What I can do, based on your suggestion, is put an asterisk (or whatever) at the beginning of every new line in my notes. Then I can find all the asterisks and replace them with tabs. This is indeed crude, since it leaves the second line of text left-justified.

I'll probably end up selecting the notes text manually and applying a style with the indenting I want because I'm ridiculously anal-retentive... but I was hoping to automate that.