Sonny Software

I'm not sure if this is related to the question posed in "Author names and reference order", but the symptoms sound vaguely similar. I'm writing a journal article and I have a number of citations by the same author. Bookends is correctly recognizing that they're the same author and appending 'a', 'b', or 'c' when the author has multiple citations in the same year, but the formatted list, while correctly alphabetized, is not ordered by date properly. Here's what a sample of what I mean:

• Yee, N. (2006a). The Psychology of Massively Multi-User Online Role-Playing Games: Motivations, Emotional Investment, Relationships and Problematic Usage. In R. Schroeder & A.-S. Axelsson (Eds.), Avatars at Work and Play: Collaboration and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments (pp. 187-207). Springer Netherlands.

• Yee, N. (2005a, January 11). MMORPG Hours vs. TV Hours [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000891.php.

• Yee, N. (2006b). The Demographics, Motivations, and Derived Experiences of Users Of Massively Multi-User Online Graphical Environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 15(3), 309-329.

• Yee, N. (2010, July 23). Overview of Participants [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://blogs.parc.com/playon/2010/07/23 ... ticipants/.

• Yee, N. (2005b). The Daedulus Project. Microsoft Excel data sets. Retrieved July 3, 2011, http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/docs/shared-data.php.

• Yee, N. (2006c). The Labor of Fun: How Video Games Blur the Boundaries of Work and Play. Games and Culture, 1(1), 68-71.

• Yee, N. (2005c, July 28). WoW Basic Demographics [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001365.php.

See what I mean about the dates? They're definitely not in order. The above is an APA 5 format, but it doesn't seem related to the format. The other thing is: I don't remember having this problem previously; it feels fairly recent. I've been using Bookends for years now. I had a look in the program's general options and then in the various style sheets, but I couldn't see anything obvious except "Alphabetize references" in the style sheet's "Bibliography Options", which was ticked and set to a sort order of "1st Author, Date, Other Authors".

I had a look at the author names to see if they were somehow the problem. They're all "Yee, Nick" except for one that appears as "Yee, Nicholas", so it's not that resetting the list. Any ideas on what's wrong or how to fix it? It also does it this way whether I scan from within Bookends directly or use the Word plug-in (which presumably just uses AppleScript to place calls to Bookends anyway).

Thanks,

Just a thought: could there be a trailing space on some occurrences (but not others) of the author's name?

The sorts are alphanumeric, based on what's in the library, not the output. So date fields that have characters in front of a year (e.g. Nov 3, 2010) will sort after those that don't (e.g. 2011). You might check your date fields.

Jon
Sonny Software

Thanks, Jon and nicka. I had thought of checking for errant spaces already in the names; that was OK. I went through all the Yee references in Bookends—not just the ones in this particular paper—and checked the 'Date' field. I removed everything except the year and checked for any trailing characters too. I rescanned the document. The order has changed, but it still looks wrong to me:

• Yee, N. (2006a). The Psychology of Massively Multi-User Online Role-Playing Games: Motivations, Emotional Investment, Relationships and Problematic Usage. In R. Schroeder & A.-S. Axelsson (Eds.), Avatars at Work and Play: Collaboration and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments (pp. 187-207). Springer Netherlands.

• Yee, N. (2005c, July 28). WoW Basic Demographics [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001365.php.

• Yee, N. (2005a, January 11). MMORPG Hours vs. TV Hours [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000891.php.

• Yee, N. (2005b). The Daedulus Project. Microsoft Excel data sets. Retrieved July 3, 2011, http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/docs/shared-data.php.

• Yee, N. (2006c). The Labor of Fun: How Video Games Blur the Boundaries of Work and Play. Games and Culture, 1(1), 68-71.

• Yee, N. (2006b). The Demographics, Motivations, and Derived Experiences of Users Of Massively Multi-User Online Graphical Environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 15(3), 309-329.

• Yee, N. (2010, July 23). Overview of Participants [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://blogs.parc.com/playon/2010/07/23 ... ticipants/.

For the first one, the author is "Yee, Nicholas". The others are "Yee, Nick". That would explain the first one because of sorting by author name in the library, but it doesn't explain why the rest aren't quite correct. Why is 2005c before 2005a? And shouldn't the sorting be done on the *output*, not what's in the library, because the output is what people will see?

Thanks,

The 2005c had to match the citation in the paper (that's what it's for). So if the reference in the paper was the 3rd one with the same authors in the final citation, it's 2005c. If that reference sorts first in the bibliography (because the 2nd author was different, for example), it's 2005c in the bibliography.

As for sort order, it's not as straightforward as "what you see". For example, authors ending in "et al." usually should be sorted as if all the authors had actually been output. In any case, if you want a straight text sort you can always select the bibliography in your word processor (well Word, anyway) and have it sort them.

Jon
Sonny Software