Output-Style Question

EndNote EndNote How To
1

Hello

First - please excuse any mistakes in my post because english is not my native language.

So I’ve got a little problem with my Output Style in Endnote.

I do have titles within a series with and without Series Volume (e.g. Studies in Egyptology vs OBO 4) or completly without a series.

Now I want endnote to write the series title always in brackets like “(Studies in Egyptology)” - independently if there is a series volume or not. So I wrote

Book Title (Series Title Series Volume) l , Pages

This works good for Book Sections without a series - Title, Pages.

But now when I do have a title with a series (eg Studies in Egyptology) it comes out like: Title (Studies in Egyptology, Pages. So the closing-bracket is missing. I guess I see the problem - the closing-bracket is dependent on the “Series Volume” - so if there’s no volume there’s no bracket. So I tried to separate the ) from the Series Volume:

Book Title (Series Title Series Volume l ) l , Pages

The result for books within a series is as I want it to be: Title (Studies in Egyptology), Pages.

But when I have a book with neither Series-Title nor Volume it comes out like: Title), Pages.

So the closing-bracket ) is independent from the whole content of the brackets. But it should be dependent on the fact if there’s a “Series-Title” or not. Is there any possibility to accomplish this? Probably something I could put behind the Series-Title to tell endnote “only-write-this-when-there’s-nothing-to-it’s-right”?

I hope my post is comprehensible.

Best regards

4

It seems that there is still no way to do this properly, which quite frankly boggles the mind, since it’s an inherent problem in any output style.

Leanne’s suggestion seems to be misunderstanding Series Volume, taking it to be the word ‘Series’ before the field Volume; the separator and link adjacent space must be changed to a simple space. But even then, unfortunately, it doesn’t work. Say you have the following three possible variations of the same reference:

Author: John Smith
Title: Lovely Book
Place of publication: Oxford
Publisher: OUP

(a)
Series Title: [empty]
Series Volume: [empty]

(b)
Series Title: Excellent Series
Series Volume: [empty]

(c)
Series Title: Excellent Series
Series Volume: 5

That is, one version where the book is not part of a monograph series; one version where it is an unnumbered volume in a monograph series; and one version where it is a numbered volume in a monograph series.

What you’d want is for those three variations to appear as follows (or in whatever output style variation you prefer):

Smith, John._Lovely Book_. Oxford: OUP
Smith, John._Lovely Book_(Excellent Series). Oxford: OUP
Smith, John._Lovely Book_(Excellent Series 5). Oxford: OUP

But this is not what you actually get. With Leanne’s suggestion, you get this:

Smith, John._Lovely Book_). Oxford: OUP
Smith, John._Lovely Book_(Excellent Series). Oxford: OUP
Smith, John._Lovely Book_(Excellent Series 5). Oxford: OUP

– which is almost right, except for the ending parenthesis after the book title.

This would logically appear to be an inherent shortcoming in the way templates are written, with only one isolator and one linker available: the ending parenthesis must somehow depend not on the immediately preceding Series Volume field, but on the Series Title field further back.

Can it really be that there is no way to do this? That manually editing the bibliography after formatting is the only way to achieve proper series formatting?

5

I just wrote a really long and detailed reply to this thread, which now seems to have vanished into thin air… did anyone else see it?

7

Yes, it seems my edit to the previous post (noting that I know the long post did go up, because I made an edit to it after posting) has also not deigned to appear.

I’m too beat now, but I’ll write up the long post again tomorrow. *sigh*

The short version is that this is still an issue: both opening and closing parenthesis need to depend on Series Title, which I can’t see any way of doing when Series Volume intervenes. You either get the closing parenthesis tacked on to the title if there’s no series, or you get a missing parenthesis if there is a series but no series volume number. :-/

10

Ah, so it wasn’t just me!

I did actually get it to work. I don’t know what I did wrong the first time around, but I must have done something not right. When I tried again, it worked. Though I admit I still can’t quite figure out why it works – the documentation on what exactly the adjacent-linker and separator do in templates leaves quite a bit to be desired.