Usage of forced separations in Endnote styles

Hello,

I am a librarian trying to figure out how to modify Output styles. I understand what forced seperations are and what they are used for, but what is not clear to me is how and when the “|” character is used in different refecence types. It seems like all the punctuations start out being dependent on the previous field, but at some point, many forced separations are used to make the punctuations dependent on the following field and I don’t quite understand why.

For exemple, this is the MLA template for a website (the “-” is for the link adjacent texte symbol):

  1. Author. “Title”. City, Year |.- Type of Medium |. Series Title. Ed.^Eds.-Series Editor .|- Edition | (Last Update Date) |:- Description .|- Publisher |.- Access Date Access Year |.- <URL> |.

What would be the difference with this modified version where the punctuation signs are all dependent on the previous field, except for the “:” of course ? (on “paper”, the result in the same)

  1. Author. “Title”. City, Year. Type of Medium. Series Title. Ed.^Eds. Series Editor. Edition (Last Update Date) |: Description. Publisher. Access Date Access Year. <URL>.

many thanks,

Caroline

Forced separation is mostly used to link punctation to the following field, that is sometimes empty.

Issue number is a typical example, which usually follows after Volume number.

Let’s say 100 as Volume, 12 as Issue, the results you want are,

100, 12. (when you have both volume and issue)

100.   (when you don’t have issue)

 The key requirement is, you want to end both cases with a period.

Then, if you use format like

Volume, Issue.

It’ll come out 100, 12. if you have issue number. That is totally fine.

But if issue information is missing, it’ll come out  100,

In this case you want to remove comma, and replace with period.

To get the result you want, the right format will be

Volume I , - Issue I .

By using forced separation “I”, comma after Volume comes up only when Issue has data. Then, it will always end with period, because the period after the Issue is separated by “I”. So, you’ll get the results you want above.

If you look at the MLA format for web page, “Type of Medium” “Description” and “URL” is formatted exactly in this way.

In the case of “Edition” and “Publisher”, the “-” code may be replaced by a regular space. “Link adjacent text” is actually non-breaking space within the Endnote style formatting, but it will not generate the “non-breaking space” symbol in Word. So, it won’t matter whether it is non-breaking spece or regular space as long as it is separated by preceding “I” code.

Does it make sense? 

Cheers,

Message Edited by myoshigi on 11-01-2008 08:27 AM