Chicago style page-range-format

CSL Evolution
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The documentation of “chicago” style of page range format says that when numbers are 4 digits long and 3 digits change, use all digits (Rule 5). One of the given example is “1496–1504”. However the referred url “Chicago Manual of Style-rules” is not accessible and this rule is not found in the latest 17th Chicago Manual of Style. Some relevant examples are presented in section 9.61 instead: 1100–1113, 1103–4, 1087–89, 1496–500, 11564–615, 12991–3001 and they follow the previous rules.

Is it necessary to update the specification of “page-range-format = chicago”?

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Thanks for the note @zepinglee.

At minimum, yes.

But I wonder: has the algorithm changed, such that we need to add a “chicago-17” option, or is our spec wrong?

Here’s an explanation, which is clear, and we could use to modify the table.

The key question is that last row in the table.

The heading for our’s is “4 digits”, but for CMS it is “110-199, 210-299, etc.”.

The linked document, however, describes it more simply (and I think usefully) as “everything else” (fits with an if/else programming structure).

In any case, as @zepinglee notes, our examples in that row diverge from Chicago 17.

cc @bwiernik @Denis_Maier

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This was a change in Chicago from 15th edition to 16th edition. The table in the spec is the 15th edition rules. We don’t have a Chicago 15th edition style, so I suggest we just update the spec here to conform to the 16th and later table. This would mean to drop the last row. I suggest we use the “Everything else” like @zepinglee suggests, but also keep the numbers in parentheses for maximum clarity.

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Here’s the PR, with a couple of questions for people.

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Edit: I misread a github notification. Not yet merged; waiting on feedback, so should be soon.

Thanks to @zepinglee for the report, and @bwiernik for the feedback and improvements.

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Doesn’t seem to be merged?

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Interestingly, CMoS17 says: “This system, used by Chicago in essentially this form since the first edition of this manual, is efficient and unambiguous.”

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“Essentially” seems accurate enough. Said the same thing in 16th.