# Periods in terms and other variables

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/periods-in-terms-and-other-variables/504>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [August 18, 2008, 8:55pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/periods-in-terms-and-other-variables/504 "2008-08-18T20:55:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**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 18, 2008, 8:55pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/periods-in-terms-and-other-variables/504/1 "2008-08-18T20:55:36Z")

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There are two outstanding issues with periods that I think should be  
fairly easy to resolve.

The first surrounds term abbreviations that include periods:

> To be properly localized, terms in the locales.xml files need to  
> include  
> all periods, since certain abbreviations may or may not require  
> trailing  
> periods depending on the language used. An example would be the short  
> version of March, which is “Mar.” in English but, according to the  
> current version of locales-de-DE.xml, “März” in German (which is the  
> same as the long form).

The second surrounds journal abbreviations:On Jul 6, 2008, at 12:20 PM, Dan Stillman wrote:

On Feb 14, 2008, at 7:31 PM, Simon Kornblith wrote:

> It’s recently been brought to my attention that some journals use  
> abbreviations with periods (“Exp. Brain Res.”) while others omit the  
> periods (“Exp Brain Res”)

It seems to me that both of these issues could be solved by allowing a  
strip-period (or strip-periods) attribute on all elements, as  
Dan suggested, and removing the include-period attribute. Are there  
any objections to such an approach? I’m willing to go through the  
existing styles to fix backwards compatibility issues.

Simon

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**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 19, 2008, 2:37pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/periods-in-terms-and-other-variables/504/2 "2008-08-19T14:37:41Z")

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But don’t each of these cases point to _term_ specific exceptions, so  
that any particular solution must be at that level (rather than text)?

E,g. …

Mai

…?

Hmm … actually, that doesn’t solve your second case, But am I right  
on the first?

Bruce

PS - Simon, comment on David’s recent post?

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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 20, 2008, 4:43pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/periods-in-terms-and-other-variables/504/3 "2008-08-20T16:43:40Z")

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If we modify the terms in the locales files to include the periods  
(“Jan.” and “Feb.” but “May”), then a text-level extension like this  
would be sufficient.

Simon

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**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 20, 2008, 5:35pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/periods-in-terms-and-other-variables/504/4 "2008-08-20T17:35:31Z")

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Ah, right. Duh.

Everyone: can you please comment on Simon’s proposal? It involves a  
simple, but backwards-incompatible, change (e.g. you need to account  
for it in your implementations).

Bruce

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**Author:** ![Elena\_Razlogova](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Elena\_Razlogova](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Elena_Razlogova)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2008, 5:44pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/periods-in-terms-and-other-variables/504/5 "2008-08-20T17:44:37Z")

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this sounds reasonable to me. elena