Sonny Software

Hi, sorry to bother you, but I tried out a demo version of Bookends and was quite impressed, but I couldn't work out how to do one teensy little thing that is very important to me, and without which I will stick with EndNote ...

In EndNote, I can format my citations to use the data in the "Short Title" field rather than "op. cit.", but I couldn't work out how to do this in Bookends. Is it in fact possible?

To give you a quick example, suppose I have a reference called "Things I like about EndNote compared to Bookends". The EndNote database has a field called Short Title, and in there I can put "Things I like".

When I cite this reference in a footnote, I can get EndNote to produce the following:

1. Some Author, "Things I like about EndNote compared to Bookends", Publisher, City, Date, p.50.
2. Someone Else, blah blah blah
3. Author, "Things I like", p.100.

In testing Bookends I could only get that third note to go something like:

3. Author, op. cit., p.100.

So my question to all you wonderful people is this: can I get Bookends to do what I want it to. I hope it can, because otherwise I'll stick with EndNote

Andrew Mac wrote:In EndNote, I can format my citations to use the data in the "Short Title" field rather than "op. cit.", but I couldn't work out how to do this in Bookends. Is it in fact possible?

Hi Andrew Mac,

Yes. In the format, instead of using t to indicate Title, you use s to indicate Secondary Title (Short Title).

You can enter this in the Secondary Order field, for example, which is what Bookends will use if the reference is cited more than once.

BTW, Bookends won't output op. cit. It will output Ibid., if you ask for that (in the format defintion).

Please refer to the User Guide for lots of (hopefully helpful) details about formatting. And if you have a specific format you have created or modified and you can't get it just right, send it to me and I'll see what I can do.

Jon
Sonny Software

Thanks, Jon. Sorry about the confusion about the "ibid, op cit" situation ... it was a few weeks ago that I gave Bookends a tryout, and I'd forgotten the exact details, other than that I couldn't figure out how to get exactly what I wanted.

But I'll give your suggestion a try when I get a chance. Sadly, though, I've got some work I need to complete before I have time to investigate further.

By the way, I did take just a quick break to pop back into Bookends and have another look, and I can see what you're referring to. I think I should let you know, however, that Bookends would crash every time I clicked on the "Example" button in the Formats Editor ...

I hope I get some time to do some more experimentation soon!

Andrew Mac wrote:I think I should let you know, however, that Bookends would crash every time I clicked on the "Example" button in the Formats Editor ...

See if that's specific to a particular format. If not, please contact me directly and we'll work through the problem.

Jon
Sonny Software