Sonny Software

I need help dealing with two seemingly incompatible formats, and probably with my failure to figure out Mellel.

I often use ^ to place the author in front of the citation, like this: {^Bondeson, 1975, #95029}

Today I started experimenting with Mellel (6.2.2). I exported a Scrivener document, and converted the text to citations. This means the unscanned citation in Mellel is ^Bondeson, 1975, #95029

For one format of mine (Plato Journal = a, d ; Enclose citations with parentheses), when I scan the document i get what I want: "A classic example is Bondeson (1975, 29-41), who..."

But the format I want to use (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy = a, t $, trans. $u3* `(`l, d), p- ; Enclose citations with nothing) doesn't include parentheses. So it should be: "A classic example is W. Bondeson, 'Plato and the Foundations of Logic and Language' ['Logic and Language'], Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, 6 (1975), 29-41, who..."

Instead, I get: "A classic example is W. Bondeson ('Plato and the Foundations of Logic and Language' ['Logic and Language'], Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, 6 (1975), 29-41, who..."

i.e. instead of the comma and space after the author name, I get a space and an opening parenthesis. I notice that Mellel removes the { } around the citation, so I don't know if that is affecting it.

As a comparison, in Word, it also doesn't quite come out right: "A classic example is W. Bondeson‘Plato and the Foundation...

i.e. instead of a comma and space after the author name, I get no space or comma.

I could fix it for the Oxford Studies format by not using the ^, and instead just typing "W. Bondeson, " and putting the - at the beginning of the citation to suppress the author. But if I do that, it makes the Plato Journal format turn out like this: "approach is W. Bondeson, (1975), who..."

i.e. I have the W. initial, which I don't want for the Plato Journal, and I have a comma after the last name, which I don't want for the Plato Journal.

I'm not sure where it will be published, so I would like to have a usage that will work for both (and in principle for all) formats.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Basic formatting for citations is handled by the format, so switching journals is handled by those. But ad hoc tweaking is handled by metacharacter instructions. If the two journals differ in their requirements of such tweaks, you'll have to adjust the temp citations accordingly. I can't be sure from your examples, but it looks like the unwanted parentheses around the citation should be handled by the format.

Jon
Sonny Software

Dear Jon,

Thank you for your incredibly swift reply, as always.

I suppose I'd like to know exactly what the ^ does. Another way of looking at my problem is the following. For the Plato Journal format, where I have selected 'Enclose citations with parentheses', the ^ moves the author name outside the parentheses, and adds a space after the name. For the Oxford Studies format, where I have selected 'Enclose citations with nothing', what does the ^ actually do? Ideally, for this format, it should do nothing, because the normal citation already has the author name where it should be, etc. Instead, it's as if the ^ expects a leading parenthesis, and adds on in when it doesn't find what it expects.

I can handle this in an ad hoc manner. I can finish my manuscript in Scrivener, export it to Mellel, and then before I submit it to Oxford Studies I can just find/replace to delete all the ^ characters. Then the citations appear properly. And I would still have my original in Scrivener, in case it gets rejected and I need to use a format for my next submission that uses parentheses and so needs the ^ some (but not all) times.

But I'd like to understand better what is going on.

G

It's a bit complicated because Mellel and Bookends share some responsibility for the output in this case. Do you want parentheses around citations in The Oxford Study instance, but not in this particular citation? Or do you not want them in all citations?

Jon
Sonny Software

Please check the next update when it's available. I think this issue has been resolved.

Jon
Sonny Software

I think I've been thinking about this a bit wrong. In the Plato Journal style, you can either place a citation at the end of a sentence like this:

"Zuckert thinks the definitions are inclusive (Zuckert, 2009, p. 691)."

Or you can do it as an indirect quote, like this:

"Zuckert (2009, p.691) thinks the definitions are inclusive."

That's why (having just wrote for the Plato Journal), some of my footnotes just have the citation and others have the 'indirect quote' form, with the author outside the parentheses.

But the Oxford Studies format would actually make the indirect quotation form really, really awkward:

"C. Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers, The Coherence of the Dialogues [Coherence] (Chicago, 2009) 691 thinks the definitions are inclusive."

So....I think the real problem is that the indirect quotation mode of citing a source is just a bad practice, because it will only work for compact citation formats but not for more elaborate ones. So think I need to rephrase all of my references to be something like:

"Zuckert thinks the definitions are inclusive. See CITATION."

Plato Journal also allows the full citation without parentheses: Zuckert, 2009, p. 691. So think think this is the solution, and I'll just stop using the ^ completely.