# Commas

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/commas/203>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [August 29, 2006, 4:19am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/commas/203 "2006-08-29T04:19:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Simon\_Kornblith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@Simon\_Kornblith](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Simon_Kornblith)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 4:19am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/commas/203/1 "2006-08-29T04:19:27Z")

</div>

Okay, so this is quite irritating. In APA style, you’re supposed to do the  
following for an in-text citation with two authors:

(Wegener & Petty, 1994)

But for a footnote, you’re supposed to do:

Wegener, D. T., & Petty, R. E. (1994). Mood management across affective  
states: The hedonic contingency hypothesis. Journal of Personality & Social  
Psychology, 66, 1034-1048.

Notice how, in the first, there’s no comma before the & sign, but in the  
second, there is.

I suspect this would be easily solved with an extra attribute (on  
/ or on /). While we’re at it, it  
may make sense to add an attribute to control the serial comma, which is  
another obnoxious and seemingly separate issue (“Kernis, Cornell, Sun,  
Berry, & Harlow, 1993” [the correct APA in-text citation] vs. “Kernis,  
Cornell, Sun, Berry & Harlow, 1993”).

Should I go ahead and modify the APA CSL file and/or schema to handle this?

In unrelated news, I have now integrated my CSL parser with Microsoft Word  
for Mac. For now, it’s quite rudimentary, but it works, and it should be  
easy to port to Windows. I look forward to showing it to you when we release  
our beta (which we’ve delayed to add new features, since the Mozilla Corp.  
has delayed Firefox 2).

And, another thought: does it make sense to start using the SF tracker for  
CSL issues?

Thanks,  
Simon

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 12:10pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/commas/203/2 "2006-08-29T12:10:37Z")

</div>

> Okay, so this is quite irritating.

Indeed. Never noticed that one.

> Notice how, in the first, there’s no comma before the & sign, but in  
> the  
> second, there is.
> 
> I suspect this would be easily solved with an extra attribute (on  
> / or on /).

This is another consequence of the localized approach BTW. Previously,  
one could have just done .

> While we’re at it, it may make sense to add an attribute to control  
> the serial comma, which is another obnoxious and seemingly separate  
> issue (“Kernis, Cornell, Sun,  
> Berry, & Harlow, 1993” [the correct APA in-text citation] vs. “Kernis,  
> Cornell, Sun, Berry & Harlow, 1993”).

But are these different? Seems the same case: a prefix before the  
“and”. Could be solved with an and-prefix attribute in fact (though  
that introduces an inconsistency).

Alternately, you could think of it as a delimiter for that separates  
the last name, with the “and” an additional label.

> Should I go ahead and modify the APA CSL file and/or schema to handle  
> this?

Yeah, but can you just post your suggest schema changes here first  
given the above?

> In unrelated news, I have now integrated my CSL parser with Microsoft  
> Word  
> for Mac.

Excellent!

> For now, it’s quite rudimentary, but it works, and it should be  
> easy to port to Windows. I look forward to showing it to you when we  
> release  
> our beta (which we’ve delayed to add new features, since the Mozilla  
> Corp.  
> has delayed Firefox 2).

Yeah, I was wondering about that. So are you use real Word field for  
storing the citations, or just dumb text markers. Obviously the former  
could be preferable, and consistent with what MS is going in Word 2007.

> And, another thought: does it make sense to start using the SF tracker  
> for  
> CSL issues?

Yeah, absolutely. Do you have rights for that?

Bruce

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Simon\_Kornblith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@Simon\_Kornblith](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Simon_Kornblith)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 4:02pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/commas/203/3 "2006-08-29T16:02:19Z")

</div>

> > While we’re at it, it may make sense to add an attribute to control  
> > the serial comma, which is another obnoxious and seemingly separate  
> > issue (“Kernis, Cornell, Sun,  
> > Berry, & Harlow, 1993” [the correct APA in-text citation] vs. “Kernis,  
> > Cornell, Sun, Berry & Harlow, 1993”).
> 
> But are these different? Seems the same case: a prefix before the  
> “and”. Could be solved with an and-prefix attribute in fact (though  
> that introduces an inconsistency).
> 
> Alternately, you could think of it as a delimiter for that separates  
> the last name, with the “and” an additional label.

But the problem is that in the APA citation, that last comma does not exist  
when there are only two authors (Kernis & Cornell, 1993), but does exist  
when there are three (Kernis, Cornell, & Sun, 1993). In the bibliography,  
the comma is always there. So it seems like we need three options:

1. No serial comma ever
2. Serial comma for 3 or more authors
3. Always a serial comma

Perhaps, on :

attribute serial-comma { “never” | “three-authors” | “always” }?

I suppose “three-authors” is a slightly clunky name for a value. An  
alternative would be to make that behavior the default, and allow { “never”

> “always”}, but then the behavior of a given CSL file is slightly less  
> transparent. I suppose we could always clear things up in the documentation.

> > In unrelated news, I have now integrated my CSL parser with Microsoft  
> > Word  
> > for Mac.
> 
> Excellent!
> 
> > For now, it’s quite rudimentary, but it works, and it should be  
> > easy to port to Windows. I look forward to showing it to you when we  
> > release  
> > our beta (which we’ve delayed to add new features, since the Mozilla  
> > Corp.  
> > has delayed Firefox 2).
> 
> Yeah, I was wondering about that. So are you use real Word field for  
> storing the citations, or just dumb text markers. Obviously the former  
> could be preferable, and consistent with what MS is going in Word 2007.

So far, we’re just using dumb text markers. If I can figure out how to embed  
a large amount of data into a Word file, I might be able to store the actual  
citations, too.

> > And, another thought: does it make sense to start using the SF tracker  
> > for  
> > CSL issues?
> 
> Yeah, absolutely. Do you have rights for that?

I don’t have admin rights, so I can’t create actual meaningful categories  
(right now the only one is “Interface Improvements (example)”), and I’m not  
sure if it will allow me to assign/accept tickets, but I think that I can  
create them.

Simon

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 5:38pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/commas/203/4 "2006-08-29T17:38:31Z")

</div>

> But the problem is that in the APA citation, that last comma does not exist  
> when there are only two authors (Kernis & Cornell, 1993), but does exist  
> when there are three (Kernis, Cornell, & Sun, 1993). In the bibliography,

Argh!!!

> the comma is always there. So it seems like we need three options:
> 
> 1. No serial comma ever
> 2. Serial comma for 3 or more authors
> 3. Always a serial comma
> 
> Perhaps, on :
> 
> attribute serial-comma { “never” | “three-authors” | “always” }?
> 
> I suppose “three-authors” is a slightly clunky name for a value. An  
> alternative would be to make that behavior the default, and allow { “never”
> 
> > “always”}, but then the behavior of a given CSL file is slightly less  
> > transparent. I suppose we could always clear things up in the documentation.

First, please change cs:name to cs:names.

For this particular problem, what about …

attribute delimiter-on-last-min { xsd:integer }

…? Or something like that. The “serial-comma” term is conufusing to  
me, and it might be good to leave it flexible?

Just an idea.

> So far, we’re just using dumb text markers. If I can figure out how to embed  
> a large amount of data into a Word file,

Peter Sefton (who is heading an Australian-based project that aims to  
do soemthing simliar to SF) had been thinking about not worrying about  
embedding, but instead using smart URLs/URIs.

> I might be able to store the actual  
> citations, too.

The lastest Open XML ECMA draft (released just the other day) has some  
more detail on the new citation field. See if you can take a look at  
that, if for no other reason to get them feedback so the spec is  
clear.

> > > And, another thought: does it make sense to start using the SF tracker  
> > > for  
> > > CSL issues?
> > 
> > Yeah, absolutely. Do you have rights for that?
> 
> I don’t have admin rights, so I can’t create actual meaningful categories  
> (right now the only one is “Interface Improvements (example)”), and I’m not  
> sure if it will allow me to assign/accept tickets, but I think that I can  
> create them.

I’ll see about chanigng your rights then.

Bruce

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Simon\_Kornblith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@Simon\_Kornblith](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Simon_Kornblith)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 5:59pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/commas/203/5 "2006-08-29T17:59:47Z")

</div>

That’s a reasonable way of doing it, too, although it seems like the default  
behavior would have to be no delimiter on the last, which is probably the  
least frequently used option. I’m not particularly picky about the way this  
is done, but it seems like we need some control over it.

Simon

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 6:04pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/commas/203/6 "2006-08-29T18:04:35Z")

</div>

Hmm … right. The default behavior (e.g. without need of this  
attribute) is that “and” gets no preceding comma. So then:

attribute and-preceding-comma { “always” | “never” | “when-more-than-two” }

…? A little ugly.

Bruce

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Simon\_Kornblith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@Simon\_Kornblith](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Simon_Kornblith)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 6:26pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/commas/203/7 "2006-08-29T18:26:40Z")

</div>

I suppose this should really be “and-preceding-delimiter” (or  
"delimiter-precedes-last") since it seems like (soon to be )  
has a “delimiter” attribute in the most recent versions of the styles. I  
agree that there’s no concise way of phrasing that last option. Perhaps it  
should just be the default, since it’s how one uses “and” in everyday  
language?

Simon