Suppressing identical surnames in custom format

[Philologist]

I have a paper with custom formatted footnotes. The first time a book is mentioned, it has a full reference, the same as in the bibliography at the end of the paper, plus a page number, if that is applicable. In subsequent footnotes however, only the last name, title and page number should be mentioned. So far, so good.

Now I have a book by three authors who all share the SAME surname. In the subsequent footnotes this will appear as:

Chateaubriand, Chateaubriand and Chateaubriand. Some Title.

This isn't exactly easy on the eye. I wonder if it's possible in a case like this to output the surname only ONCE, so that I will get

Chateaubriand. Some Title.

This looks better in my opinion than having the same surname appear three times, one after the other. Three identical surnames are somehow redundant, because the full names have already appeared in a footnote when the book was first mentioned, and the reader will also find the full names in the bibliography.

[Jon]

That's what the secondary order field is for. But you use it for all references or none. You can't make ad hoc adjustments like this (of course you can edit the scanned footnote yourself for one-off's like this).

Jon
Sonny Software

[Philologist]

That's what the secondary order field is for.

I searched for the term "Secondary order field" in the User Guide and found only one (1) instance of it on page 308. Just to be sure I understand you correctly, isn't this the same as the "Subsequent (Optional)" field?

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I don't understand how one can use this field to accomplish what I want. Theoretically, one could enter the name "Chateaubriand " into a custom field and then use that field instead of the author's field, but that would require entering the author twice for every record, and that wouldn't be a good solution, apart from the fact that all my custom fields are already taken.

of course you can edit the scanned footnote yourself for one-off's like this

Yes, in the meantime I have created a re-usable macro search in Nisus to deal with this. I seem to have plenty of references with two or three authors who have the same surname.

[Jon]

Yes, it used to be called the "secondary order" field, and I still refer to it that way sometimes. It was subsequently named subsequent. :-)

It's used to make the second occurrence of a reference citation look different from the first, and that's what you appear to want. Notice that it's set to output put only Surname et al. the second time, avoiding the repetition of the three names.

But as I said, it would apply to all references cited twice, not just the those with identical author names. You're solution in NWP is better.

Jon
Sonny Software