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Respost

Comma and semicolons

Carol fa 3 anys updated by floris roelofsen fa 3 anys 2

Hi Christian, We have our page nearly done, but it appears that the semicolon delimiter should be replaced with a comma or with ", and" in the author sections. Is it possible to replace the semicolon with a comma in the base code between the author names? When reviewing multiple bibliography style guides, they all vary somewhat. The more recent style guides use the ", &" before the last name, some use ', and" before the last name, but all use the comma instead of the semicolon as a delimiter. Is that something that can be done? Is there a fee to change it? Below are sample references to this. Thank you!


https://libguides.ioe.ac.uk/c.php?g=482485&p=3299802
separation by a comma + and for the last author
Darlow, B., Dowell, A., Baxter, G.D., Mathieson, F., Perry, M. and Dean, S, (2013). 'The enduring impact of what clinicians say to people with low back pain', Annals of Family Medicine, 11 (6), pp.527-534.

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/reference_list_author_authors.html
Three to Twenty Authors
List by last names and initials; commas separate author names, while the last author name is preceded again by ampersand. This is a departure from APA 6, which only required listing the first six authors before an ellipsis and the final author's name.
Nguyen, T., Carnevale, J. J., Scholer, A. A., Miele, D. B., & Fujita, K. (2019). Metamotivational knowledge of the role of high-level and low-level construal in goal-relevant task performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(5), 879-899. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000166


Chicago Style:
https://library.ship.edu/c.php?g=21703&p=127136
Full Example
1. Ryan C. Black, Rachel A. Schutte, and Timothy R. Johnson, “Trying to Get What You Want: Heresthetical Maneuvering and U.S. Supreme Court Decision Making,” Political Research Quarterly 66, no. 4 (December 2013): 826, doi:10.1177/1065912913482757.

https://utica.libguides.com/c.php?g=703243&p=4991631
Example:
Sillick, Thomas J., and Norman Schutte. "Emotional Intelligence and Self-esteem Mediate between Perceived Early Parental Love and Adult Happiness. E-Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 38-48. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23358832.

Respost

Hi Carol,

I think this is indeed a matter of style and taste, but I agree that the option should at least exist. So we've gone ahead and added a new customization option to do just that. You can now add "&commas=true" to your bibbase url. It will then use commas instead of semicolons, and ampersands instead of the "and".

Thanks for the suggestion!

This new feature is great!

I have two more small improvements to suggest in this same direction:

1) If there are just two authors or editors the delimiter should simply be and or &. That is, there should not be a comma in this case. In fact, I would personally prefer it if the delimiter before the last author or editor is always just and or &, without a comma, no matter whether there are two authors/editors or more.

2) At the end of the list of editors, it would be better not to generate a full stop, because it is immediately followed by a comma. It would be best, I think, to just have the comma.

For example, the following:

Searching for a universal constraint on the denotations of clause-embedding predicates. Floris Roelofsen, & Wataru Uegaki. In Joseph Rhyne, Kaelyn Lamp, Nicole Dreier, & Chloe Kwon., editor(s), Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT 30), pages 542-561, 2020. Linguistics Society of America


should become (with adapted elements in boldface):


Searching for a universal constraint on the denotations of clause-embedding predicates. Floris Roelofsen and Wataru Uegaki. In Joseph Rhyne, Kaelyn Lamp, Nicole Dreier and Chloe Kwon, editor(s), Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT 30), pages 542-561, 2020. Linguistics Society of America.

Thank you for all your work on this very helpful software!