# how do you disambiguate that?

**URL:** https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/how-do-you-disambiguate-that/851
**Category:** CSL Development
**Created:** [May 31, 2010, 11:54am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/how-do-you-disambiguate-that/851 "2010-05-31T11:54:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 8

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### Author: ![Frank\_Bennett](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/frank_bennett/32/198_2.png) [@Frank\_Bennett](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Frank_Bennett)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2010, 11:59pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/how-do-you-disambiguate-that/851/8 "2010-06-01T23:59:33Z")

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Andrea,

This is a beautiful set of test data. It’s helping to clarify things  
that have been quietly lurking about without clear solutions.

> > > > > citeproc-js, and citeproc-hs do the following:
> > > > > 
> > > > > Smith, Brown & J. Jones (1980); Smith, Brown & J. Jones (1980)  
> > > > > Smith, Brown & J. Jones (1980); Smith, Benson, et al. (1980)  
> > > > > Smith, Brown & J. Jones (1980); Smith, Brown & A. Jones (1980)
> > > > > 
> > > > > is that correct? I have the feeling that the first one should be:
> 
> …
> 
> > > Adding disambiguate-add-year-suffix=“true” would produce the  
> > > collapsing of ITEM-1 and ITEM-2. ITEM-3 would be the same.
> > 
> > I get the same here. Yay.
> 
> I must confess I’m still a bit confused about the relations among the  
> various disambiguation options… so, to recapitulate, with the  
> initial example and:
> 
> - disambiguate-add-names=“true” we get:

It’s correct. The pairing of cites in the output isn’t relevant,  
although it’s a very helpful pattern for readability. ITEM-1 should  
render in the same form everywhere in the document. It’s the first  
item in each pair, so Smith, Brown & Jones (1980) is exactly right for  
it, in the second line as well.

> - disambiguate-add-names=“true”, disambiguate-add-givenname=“true”  
> and givenname-disambiguation-rule=“all-names”:

Yep, that looks right. ITEM-1 and ITEM-2 are not fully  
disambiguating, but we just provide all the information we can.

> - disambiguate-add-names=“true”, disambiguate-add-givenname=“true”,  
> givenname-disambiguation-rule=“all-names”, and  
> disambiguate-add-year-suffix=“true”
> 
> And this? Should the last one be “Smith, Brown & Jones”?

This one gets interesting. Technically, the cites disambiguate fine  
here, and as you say, the initial “A.” looks superfluous. But I  
wonder …

If you think about a reader digging through the bibliography looking  
for these entries, and if you assume that the bibliography list is  
sorted alphabetically by author, their task will be made much easier  
if the max names are retained for the items disambiguated with  
year-suffix (ITEM-1 and ITEM-2) – the extra information isn’t  
relevant to disambiguation, but it can be relevant to the search for  
the entries in a linear listing, because it helps the reader figure  
out where to start looking – “Smith et al.” could be “Smith, Anderson  
and Zappa”, or “Smith, Zappa and Anderson”, if there are 50 works by  
Smith as the primary author, you’d kind of want to know which end of  
the list to start from.

I’m not sure what the style guides say, so I guess that checking them  
out would be the next step. But at the threshold, does anyone have  
views on this one?

Frank

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