# Providing an original date and location for a published letter

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/providing-an-original-date-and-location-for-a-published-letter/1888>\
**Category:** CSL Usage\
**Created:** [February 26, 2025, 11:39pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/providing-an-original-date-and-location-for-a-published-letter/1888 "2025-02-26T23:39:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Andrew\_Dunning](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/andrew_dunning/32/433_2.png) [@Andrew\_Dunning](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Andrew_Dunning)\
**Post date:** [February 26, 2025, 11:39pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/providing-an-original-date-and-location-for-a-published-letter/1888/1 "2025-02-26T23:39:20Z")

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In revising the Chicago Manual of Style CSL definitions, I’m trying to work out how to allow for both the date of an edited collection and the date of a letter. I’m thinking of using `event-date` if it exists in the citation (alongside `event-place` for the first below) – does this seem sensible? I am trying to base my implementation on APA by @bwiernik but they do not address this particular case.

Relevant CMOS examples:

1. Adams to Charles Milnes Gaskell, Baden, September 22, 1867, in _Letters of Henry Adams, 1858–1891_, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford (Houghton Mifflin, 1930), 133–34.

2. White to Harold Ross, memorandum, May 2, 1946, in _Letters of E. B. White_, ed. Dorothy Lobrano Guth (Harper & Row, 1976), 273.

3. Adams to Gaskell, London, March 30, 1868, 141.

4. Adams to John Hay, Washington, October 26, 1884, in Adams, _Letters_, 361.

> Jackson, Paulina. Paulina Jackson to John Pepys Junior, October 3, 1676. In _The Letters of Samuel Pepys and His Family Circle_, edited by Helen Truesdell Heath, no. 42. Clarendon Press, 1955.

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**Author:** ![bwiernik](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/bwiernik/32/438_2.png) [@bwiernik](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/bwiernik)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 12:23am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/providing-an-original-date-and-location-for-a-published-letter/1888/2 "2025-02-27T00:23:06Z")

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Yes, I would use event-date here for the date of the letter, similar to how you would use it for the date a conference paper was presented if you were citing the published version in a proceedings.