Sonny Software

In the format manager, under the "Citation options" tab, a user can specify text to be output for repeated citations (e.g. "ibid") when using a custom citation format. Now, MLA style requires that textual citations from a repeated source include only the page number. From what I can tell, this is not possible using the setting Bookends currently provides. Leaving the textbox blank has the same effect as unchecking the "For repeated citations use" setting altogether. Is this right? Is there currently no way to accomplish this? Since the user has the option to uncheck the box, why ignore the setting if the textbox is left blank?

Hi,

So you want Bookends to output nothing when a citation is repeated (e.g. () )? Of course, if a cited page is there it will be output. I'll look into implementing that...

Jon
Sonny Software

Yes, that is basically correct. After a reference, e.g.

(Matthews 104)

if the next subsequent reference is from the same Matthews book, it should just output:

(105).

If it is from a different Matthews book, it should output the full citation, i.e.

(Matthews, Short title 97)

If the next consecutive reference is from the same book and on the same page, I'm pretty sure no textual citation is necessary, so nothing should be output.

MLA textual citations in 10.6.1 are perfect! Thank you!

It turns out that I incorrectly said (many many versions ago) that in a MLA paper in which there are two consecutive references from the same work, same page, the following should happen*:

"First quotation" (Matthews 5). "Second quotation."

This is wrong — the reverse is actually true, and only if the quotations are within the same paragraph:

"First quotation." "Second quotation" (Matthews 5).

If they are in separate paragraphs, the author remains implicit and so can be suppressed, but the page number must be repeated:

"First quotation" (Matthews 5).

"Second quotation (5)."

Is Bookends smart enough for these contingencies? If it's not (i.e. if it doesn't know about paragraph breaks or if it can't make decisions for textual citations based on the content of subsequent citations), I'm not sure what the best option is.


*Since Jon told me once that Bookends isn't capable of totally suppressing a citation, this actually gets rendered:

"First quotation" (Matthews 5). "Second quotation" ().

Or, if you don't have Bookends enclose the citation:

"First quotation" (Matthews 5). "Second quotation" .

Bookends doesn't know about paragraphs and it doesn't know what citations lie ahead. Does MLA really say you can't cite the author in subsequent citations? Or just that you're allowed not to? Of course you can alAs far as suppressing an empty citation, hm, please check and see if that's still the case (I can't remember).

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote:Does MLA really say you can't cite the author in subsequent citations? Or just that you're allowed not to?

MLA says readability trumps redundancy, so you should always strive to use shorter and fewer textual citations, which means eliminating the author wherever possible. This is already Bookends' current behavior for MLA.

Jon wrote:Of course you can alAs far as suppressing an empty citation, hm, please check and see if that's still the case (I can't remember).

I'm not sure I follow what you're asking!

That's because I submitted an incomprehensible sentence! :-) I was suggesting that I thought I might have changed Bookends' behavior so that it would omit an empty citation. But on reflection I don't think I did that.

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote:I thought I might have changed Bookends' behavior so that it would omit an empty citation. But on reflection I don't think I did that.

In my experience Bookends will include empty citations as "()" if instructed to enclose citations, and as " " if instructed not to. I would love it if it would just omit the citation altogether!

It gets a little tricky if the citation is in the middle of a group. But I'll make a note of it.

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote:It gets a little tricky if the citation is in the middle of a group.

If by "group" you mean {citation 1; citation 2; citation 3}, I have seen groups so rarely that is probably doesn't matter whether it works correctly or not. I don't think I've ever a citation group with more than two citations in MLA, and precious few of those.