same surname different firstname generating (2007a), (2007b)

[Massachusetts user]

I am discovering that two articles by different authors with the same surname are being given (2007a), (2007b)-type citations and bibliography entries. That is, where one article is by Mary Lastname and the other is by John Lastname, I'm getting:

"Lastname (2007a) says that Lastname (2007b) is right."

What I need to do in such cases is produce a document with the following:

"Lastname (2007) says that J.Lastname (2007) is right."

I don't expect Bookends to know which one of the two gets the first initial, but I do want it to refrain from generating the a's and b's in such circumstances. (I *do* want a's and b's where the same author wrote two articles in the same year.)

Is there a setting that I've missed, or a workaround besides manually editing the output?

[Jon]

Hi,

I suggest you use the self-deleting citation. Type

"Lastname (2007) {!cite 1} says that J.Lastname (2007) {!cite 2} is right."

Note the exclamation points. Bookends will remove the temporary cites after the scan and replace them with nothing, but will include the references in the bibliography.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Massachusetts user]

Thanks. This is a workaround,not a fix, I guess. Am I correct that this requires me to keep track if either of the Lastnames themselves have more than one citation in a given year (e.g. Lastname (2007a), Lastname (2007b), M. Lastname (2007). That is, I'll need to go to the bibliography, find out which is 2007a, which is 2007b, and insert the citations of "2007a", "2007b" and "2007" myself -- is that right?

It would be great if the user could control this behavior. In fact is there any journal that uses the "Author (date)" format that wants a's and b's where the firstnames are different? If not, maybe this could be treated as a bug, and fixed in a later version of the program.

[Jon]

It's not a bug, it's just the way the program works. If Bookends sees two citations that are identical but refer to different references, it differentiates them with a letter after the year. This is what is happening here. You can differentiate them them outside of the citation (with first names), but of course Bookends knows nothing about that. The workaround (which it is) is to enter the final citation yourself and place a self-deleting temporary citation next to it (assuming you want the references in the bibliography).

Jon
Sonny Software

[Massachusetts user]

Thanks for the explanation. I actually decided on a distinct workaround that is easier to use for me. I added a non-standard character to the database entry for the last name of one of the like-named authors. That way the citation and bibliography dates come out right the first time. Either I will remember to delete the stray character (I picked "⁋") or if I forget, it will at least be a self-evident typo to any reader or editor. This wouldn't be a good solution if both authors were ones I'm likely to cite a lot, but works for now.

I had assumed that the a's and b's were added because the program knows that the citations share an author name in the database, but if the program is only looking at the citations themselves, I see how this would be unchangeable.

[Reiner]

It's not a bug, it's just the way the program works. If Bookends sees two citations that are identical but refer to different references, it differentiates them with a letter after the year. This is what is happening here. You can differentiate them them outside of the citation (with first names), but of course Bookends knows nothing about that. The workaround (which it is) is to enter the final citation yourself and place a self-deleting temporary citation next to it (assuming you want the references in the bibliography).

Jon
Sonny Software

I would like to add this as a feature request: It would be fine if Bookends would output an Initial of the first name in cases when different authors with the same last name.

[Jon]

Better support for MLA (which does something like this) is something I do intend to get to. But it's not at the top of the list yet.

Jon
Sonny Software