Sonny Software

Hi again.

I am doing articles in several languages and I've hit a problem: Ordinal numbers for editions.

I tried reading the manual, but I haven't been able to figure out how to customise the ordinal numbers for each language with using different formats.

So what I'm doing is that I have styles such as: Oxford - English and Oxford - German etc. The styles are otherwise identical but the words and abbreviations included in the format are translated.

For example, "pp. xx-xx" for English page ranges and "S. xx-xx" for German.

But I also need to change the ordinals for editions. So far I've just edited my bibliographies by hand after Bookends has created them. But this often gets me into trouble as I simply forget to change them, as they are the only thing which need to be changed.

So what I'm thinking is that this could probably be automated quite easily. (?)

Now I've been entering "2nd" or "3rd" into the editions field for each work. But it would be smarter if it was possible to just enter the number "2" or "3" into the field, and then have Bookends putting in the required stuff to make it into an ordinal number.

So in my English format they would turn into "2nd ed." and "3rd ed."
And the German format would turn them into: "2. Aufl." and "3. Aufl."

Or is this already possible somehow? With some conditional formatting "If 2 then add 'nd', if 3 then add 'rd' ..."

I appreciate the request, but proposed solution is pretty arcane (as may be the problem). What if you dedicated a user field to the German Edition. Then use conditional formatting, and if the edition field has data use it, otherwise if the user field you use has data, use it?

Jon
Sonny Software

Thanks!

That at least solves the problem for now. And I understand that most users don't need this.

This quick fix has one downside: more languages used the more fields you might need (and remember to fill all of them too). At the moment I need three different languages. But luckily for me, two of them use the German type ordinals where it's just the number followed by full stop.