Sonny Software

Hello all,

Would appreciate quick clarification on my understanding of the {$citation} feature.

If I use it to exclude a specific reference from the bibliography in a given footnote >> i.e. {Peter.article} says the following "blah blah blah" [citing {$Jones.book}] >> if, at a later point, I then use that same (previously excluded) reference again {Jones.book}, in a different footnote but WITHOUT the "$" exclusion, am I correct in assuming it will then be included in the bibliography?

In other words - does the "$" only work per citation entry - or will it exclude ALL subsequent citation entries of the same author/reference?

It should only work on the particular citation I think (but I confess I haven't used it for a long time). Do you find differently?

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote:It should only work on the particular citation I think (but I confess I haven't used it for a long time). Do you find differently?

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon - I just tried it out, by creating a test page in Scrivener, and it doesn't work as hoped.

I created FN1, with "{First.article} citing from {$First.book}", with the latter marked as excluded.
FN2 saw {Second.book}.
FN3 saw {First.book} again, with no exclusion.

The bibliography saw {First.article} and {Second.book} being listed, with NO {First.book}, which I was hoping would be included.

Is this something that can be fixed easily?

I hope so - whereas it obviously won't happen often - the way it works now would make the $-Exclusion feature far more complex to invoke, since one would need to be absolutely certain that the excluded citation is not going to find it's way back in, in a completely different footnote/chapter/section, somewhere down the line...

I thinking about this a bit more, the behavior makes perfect sense. A reference can only occur once in a bibliography. So if it's excluded for any citation, it will be excluded from the bibliography. Thus, it is behaving properly.

If you're trying to exclude the citation from appearing in a footnote, that's an entirely different thing. You'd use !. In this case, the citation will not appear in in the footnote but it would in the bibliography.

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote:I thinking about this a bit more, the behavior makes perfect sense. A reference can only occur once in a bibliography. So if it's excluded for any citation, it will be excluded from the bibliography. Thus, it is behaving properly.

If you're trying to exclude the citation from appearing in a footnote, that's an entirely different thing. You'd use !. In this case, the citation will not appear in in the footnote but it would in the bibliography.

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon - thanks for the feedback - as always, appreciate the prompt response.

I would love to hear other users thoughts on this - as I would (respectfully) reason it would make more sense for it to work on a citation-by-citation scenario.

By way of explanation - what I'm working on currently spans several chapters, and many hundreds of pages. I'm only periodically returning to certain chapters - with months/years passing between.

Where I inserted {First.article} quoting {First.book} in (say) Chp 1 back in 2013 - I hadn't yet read/obtained {First.book}. Accordingly, {First.book} should not have appeared in the bibliography (at that point in time).
Assume I quote extensively from {First.article}, but in only 1 of those footnotes, did I exclude {$First.book} - since it was only quoted from once, in a passage I inserted into Chp 1.

Fast forward two years. Along with all the other sources that have been acquired since then - one of them is {First.book}. I have potentially long since forgotten about that $-exclusion back in 2013.

In Chapter 5, I now start quoting extensively from {First.book}.
{First.book} never started as a prominent source - but much changed over 2 years - as did the realisation that it is in fact important for the purposes of my project. As a result, it should now be included within the bibliography, as one of the primary sources.

From what I understand, the problem of course, is that it will not, due to a single use of the $-exclusion some two years back!

I obviously want peace-of-mind in knowing that everything cited, needs to appear in the bibliography, unless I have decided otherwise.
In the above scenario - I changed my mind about a specific reference two years apart - but unless I consciously conduct a search for $-exclusions through my almost-finalised manuscript in Scrivener, and verify that those excluded must remain excluded, I would be none-the-wiser.

I can appreciate your reasoning that it works as it should, but surely the above scenario is not unlikely? Were the $-exclusion to only work on a footnote-by-footnote basis, it would prevent a situation where a single letter ("$") could result in a major source being excluded from a bibliography completely.

If my view remains that of the minority - then maybe consider updating the manual etc. to reflect this point.
At the time of my initial question, I thought I was wasting my time popping up the original post - being pretty sure it would work as I had envisaged it. I was quite surprised to see it excludes every other (similar) reference from the blibliography as well.

I would suggest that users need to be made aware of that - since it could have a pretty big effect - even where, heaven forbid, a simple typo sees a stray "$" being inserted before a particular reference.

Whether or not a reference is included in the bibliography is a binary decision. Yes or no. You've told Bookends in one place to exclude it, in another to include it. Which is Bookends going to believe? It believes the decision to exclude (since that requires your active intervention). That's the way it works, and that makes sense to me. The fact that you forgot that you excluded it in an earlier draft is the problem here, and there's nothing that Bookends can do about that.

Jon
Sonny Software