Sonny Software

Dear all,

I can't find this elsewhere in the forum, but please forgive me if it is.

I am preparing a bibliography from a database which has references gathered from a number of sources. Sometimes the author is given their full name (as in Smith, John), others it's (Smith, J. - note the period) and others it's (Smith, J - no period). When I ask for the bibliography to be formatted, however, it starts new lists for each of these authors so that the date sequence (if I'm using a Harvard variant) restarts in each case. What this means is that the Smith, Js will be listed in ascending date order, followed by the Smith, J.s, again in ascending date order, when they are the same author. Now I can go through and reformat all my references into the same format, but it does say on page 21 of the manual that this shoudn't be a problem:

Initials can be succeeded by another initial, a period, a space, or nothing. These are all acceptable ways of entering a name:
Doe, J. M. Doe, J M Doe, J.M. Doe, JM

Am I alone in getting this problem, and if not, is there a fix please?

Thanks,

Ian

You can enter names with or without punctuation and it won't be a problem for creating the format (Bookends will ignore the punctuation when it creates the formatted name). But for sorting it does natter (Bookends sorts on the database form of the name, not the formatted form). Your best bet is to remove the periods. You can do this several ways. One is a Global Change, doing a find/replace in the Authors field of the selected references (or the hits, or all references), replacing "." with nothing (or a space, whichever makes more sense in your entries). I'd do this on a copy of your database (it's not undo-able).

Or if there are only a few, you can use the Authors Term List to find names that differ only in punctuation, and doing a Replace (in the Action menu, in the Term List window).

Jon
Sonny Software

Thank you Jon, that has fixed the problem. I've now just got to get into the habit of missing out the '.'s.

Best,

Ian

I'm sorry - looks like I spoke a little too soon.

Now I have an additional issue - where I have an author entered into the bibliography with their full name - as in Smith, John, their bibliographic details are listed separately from those with Smith, J

Unless I go through and get every multiple author consistent (in a database of over 4,000 items) is there a workaround for this?

Thanks,

Ian