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Re: en-dashes in Year fields

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Re: en-dashes in Year fields
Author: David L Morgan    Posted: 18/05/2000 00:30:21 GDT
>I am having a problem using en-dashes (option+hyphen) in the Year field >(such as in 1890-1894) and having them format properly when I format my >bibliography. When the paper is scanned, any citation with the en-dash in >the Year field can not be located by EN. If I replace them with a hyphen >(though this is typographically incorrect), it works just fine. Obviously I >can go in manually and replace the hyphens with en-dashes, but this is a >hassle. Strangely, en-dashes in a page range is no problem. The pages field is designed to hold a range. Date is intended for a single year, and is probably being used for sorting. How can a reference have been published in a range of years? Certainly sorting by year when references have non-numeric characters in the year field is bound to cause problems. David _________________________________________________________ David Morgan Reader, Dept Elec & Comp Sys Engineering, Research Director, Monash University Centre for Biomedical Engineering, Associate of the Department of Physiology, P. O. Box 35, Monash University, Vic, 3800, Australia. Phone (61) (3) 9905 3483, Fax (61) (3) 9905 1820

Re: en-dashes in year fields
Author: Andrew Sparling    Posted: 18/05/2000 15:33:37 GDT
David Morgan wrote: > How can a reference have >been published in a range of years? It happens all the time. First, multivolume works are often published over several years. So, for instance, the critical edition of the works of Martin Luther began publishing in 1883 and *may* have published its final vol. in 1996 (although who knows? More may yet follow.) Second, even single-volume works may be published in fascicules (sections) over an indeterminate interval. This seems to happen quite a bit with Italian scholarly publications in the humanities. I too insert en-dashes in the year field; so far, I haven't seen it cause problems, but I haven't been formatting extensively in my word processor. (EN 4, Mac, OS 9.) Andrew Sparling Durham, N.C.

Re: en-dashes in Year fields
Author: Leo Bores    Posted: 18/05/2000 15:50:50 GDT
> The pages field is designed to hold a range. Date is intended for a > single year, and is probably being used for sorting. How can a > reference have been published in a range of years? In point of fact, certain medical publications are published with a date that spans two years. These are often collections of abstracts and/or symposium proceedings. Hence the difficulty and no doubt the question. Leo D. Bores, M.D. Medical Research Director Ophthalmic International, Inc. voice: 480-837-6810 FAX: 480-837-6870

Re: en-dashes in Year fields
Author: Dylan Wiliam    Posted: 18/05/2000 18:24:22 GDT
The US journal Educational Leadership each year has an issue that covers December to January, so the year of publication would need to have two consecutive years. >> The pages field is designed to hold a range. Date is intended for a >> single year, and is probably being used for sorting. How can a >> reference have been published in a range of years? > >In point of fact, certain medical publications are published with a >date that spans two years. These are often collections of abstracts >and/or symposium proceedings. Hence the difficulty and no doubt >the question. > > >Leo D. Bores, M.D. >Medical Research Director >Ophthalmic International, Inc. >voice: 480-837-6810 >FAX: 480-837-6870 Dylan Wiliam School of Education King's College London Franklin-Wilkins Building (Waterloo Bridge Wing) Waterloo Road Tel: +44 (0)20 7 848 3153 London SE1 8WA Fax: +44 (0)20 7 848 3182 England http://www.kcl.ac.uk/education

Re: en-dashes in Year fields
Author: David L Morgan    Posted: 19/05/2000 06:08:31 GDT
>Troy, > >Thanks for the heads up on the en-dash in the Year field. I hadn't yet >noticed the problem, but would have eventually, as we humanists >encounter a number of reference works, etc., that are published over a >range of years. I still believe that multi-year date fields are an absurdity. How do you sort your references by date? The first date? The last date? The average? The mind boggles! Never mind citations, temporary or otherwise. The date is the date published. If different volumes of a series are published at different times, then each volume is a separate item. They are simply distinct books in a series, a situation that EndNote handles fine with its series title field. The December-January issue of a journal is clearly published in January, containing contributions from December and January. Get rid of multi-year years, and the dashes will not be a problem. Leave them there and you will inevitably have all sorts of problems, not limited to dashes. David _________________________________________________________ David Morgan Reader, Dept Elec & Comp Sys Engineering, Research Director, Monash University Centre for Biomedical Engineering, Associate of the Department of Physiology, P. O. Box 35, Monash University, Vic, 3800, Australia. Phone (61) (3) 9905 3483, Fax (61) (3) 9905 1820

Re: en-dashes in Year fields
Author: Troy Sagrillo    Posted: 20/05/2000 16:13:25 GDT
on 20.05.2000 3.00 AM, David L Morgan wrote: > I still believe that multi-year date fields are an absurdity. I find it an absurdity to list a 12 volume encyclopaedia with 12 different citations, each with a different year, or a dictionary published in fascicle format with 30+ (and counting) citations, each with a different year. If you wish to, be my guess. I prefer a multi-year citation, which EndNote already handles just fine with hyphens. All I would like to do is be able to use an en-dash instead of an incorrect hyphen. A simple bit of extra programming in the next update and the problem is solved > How do you sort your references by date? The first date? The last date? EN does it by the 1st year, which is fine by me. > The date is the date published. If different volumes of a series are > published at different times, then each volume is a separate item. That would be absolutely ludicrous. Some how my university library's online database manages just fine, as do those of a number of other university libraries. If they did as you suggest, their data bases would be enormous. And I don't particularly want my EN libraries artificially inflated either (not to mention incredibly stupid formatted bibliographies listing EVERY fascicle ever published in a given work). How would you use EN to handle the following reference: Kitchen, Kenneth Anderson. 1969-1990. _Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical_. 8 vols. Oxford: B. H. Blackwell ltd. These 8 volumes were issued in fascicle format, with each volume having a minimum of 20 fascicles (some many more). The fascicles did NOT come out in consecutive order. Volumes 1, 3, and 6 might have had 4 fascicles *each* issued in 1970, none in 1971, &c. Moreover, to say the work was published in 1990 is just plain wrong, seeing as it was already being cited by other authors before the entire work was complete. To me, a year range, as given above, solves all the problems simply. EN sorts it under 1969 (which is where it ought to be anyhow, imo). Following your suggestion, I would have well over 160 citations, assuming I know the year that every fascicle was physically published, which I do not (not all were noted by the publisher). If I ever wanted to have the entire work in a formatted bibliography, it would take page after page to list something that a simple en-dash or hyphen could handle, cutting the length to 2 lines tops. > They are simply distinct books in a series, a situation that EndNote handles > fine with its series title field. The December-January issue of a journal is > clearly published in January, containing contributions from December and > January. well some journals aren't as clear, I am afraid. Some journals give things like "1973-1978" and don't note when the actual volume was physically issued (and in the case of this particular journal, it was very likely well after 1978 as their production schedule is not exactly regular). I did not choose to make the journal do this, but I certainly am not going to rewrite their style (even if I did happen to know the actual year of publication). The same goes for some books that give, for example, "1983-1988" as the year of publication. Again, not my choice. If, in the example of "1973-1978" I cited "1978" as the year of publication, it would be an error, as that particular volume also covers years 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, and 1977. Also, in the case of journals, the year the journal was actually printed is not what is cited. Most journals (at least in Egyptology) come out at least a year, if not more, later than the year given on the cover. It would be improper to cite the year of printing for that volume, as you are suggesting above. > Get rid of multi-year years, and the dashes will not be a problem. of course, but in the process I loose important bibliographic data. I'd rather use a hyphen than do that. > Leave them there and you will inevitably have all sorts of problems, not > limited to dashes. You know, strangely enough, neither sorting nor anything else has been a problem whatsoever with hyphens or / (such as in "1976/77" or "1375 AH/1955 CE"). No reason it can't be the same with en-dashes. If you don't want to use them, fine by me -- don't. You apparently don't mind having inflated EN libraries and absurdly long formatted bibliographies. I do. Since EN already handles hyphens just fine, adding en-dashes shouldn't be that much of a challenge for the programmers. Troy -- Troy Sagrillo Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations University of Toronto Canada

Re: en-dashes in Year fields
Author: Peter Castine    Posted: 22/05/2000 08:08:47 GDT
On around Fri, 19 May 2000 15:08:31 +1000, David L Morgan said something like: >I still believe that multi-year date fields are an absurdity. Not an absurdity at all. In addition to other examples given, C.P.E. Bach's _Versuch ¸ber die wahre Art, das Clavier zu spielen_ was published in two parts, nine years apart. There are zillions of similar examples in the field of historical musicology, and I suspect this is typical of many other areas. _Versuch_ is typically listed as 1753/62, for instance in _dtv-Atlas zur Musik_. If you're going to claim that B”renreiter's editorial board doesn't know how to format a bibliography, I would like to know on what authority you base your claim. It'd better be good.-) Often articles are published in several parts, crossing year boundaries. I've seen this in _Journal of Music Theory_ and other places. I've seen articles published across as many as three or four issues of a journal (cf. Griggs, John C. "The Church Choir: Its Origins, Its Needs, Its Possibilities." _The Congregationalist._ Vol. 77... spreads over three issues). Legal documents can be even worse, with amendments taking place every couple of years. So even providing for a from-to format is an unrealistic limitation if a bibliography is going to reflect dates of amendment. If anyone has _Chicago Manual of Style_ or a similar reference at hand, I would be curious as to what recommendations they make. Somehow I supsect that they will have taken a good hard look at the problem and take cognizance of the fact that not all references in the world were published in a single year. > How do you >sort your references by date? The first date? The last date? The >average? Average? Now you're being absurd yourself. Typically, multiple-date references are sorted by the first date listed. But this does not relieve the bibliographer of her responsibility to include all relevant dates in a citation. >The date is the date published. Exactly. Burney's _General History of Music_ was published from 1776-1789. It is not a single year. > If different volumes of a series are >published at different times, then each volume is a separate item. Nonsense. Nobody would list each volume of Grove's or _Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart_ or even _Encyclopeadia Britannica_ as an individual item. And how many encyclopaediae are published within a single year? Nor does it make any sense to write four entries in a bibliography for an article spread over four issues of a journal. It's a single article, to be read as an entity and in reprints will almost invariably be issued as a single unit. > The December-January issue of a journal >is clearly published in January, containing contributions from December and >January. Clearly? Journal dates have only a tenous relation to when they were "really" published. A Dec.-Jan. issue is equally likely to have been published (in the sense of "printed and put on the streets") on either side of St. Sylvester's day. For that matter, it may have actually hit the newstands in the summer months of either year, nominal publication date notwithstanding. When the contributions were made has nothing at all to do with publication date; many tech. journals have lead times of two to three years! >Get rid of multi-year years, and the dashes will not be a problem. This is true, but just ignores numerous facts of life in real-world bibliographies. I would gently suggest that you take a closer look at style guides for bibliographies before making broad claims about what is or is not "absurd." Why EndNote should make for problems with en-dashes remains a mystery, and apparently the problems do not extend to all issues of EndNote (published in 1988, 1999, 2000, and a few years in between;-) Cheers, Peter ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Peter Castine | We look forward to seeing you at this year's | International Computer Music Conference in | Berlin! | More information at <http://www.icmc2000.org/>

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