# Rules when switching between citation styles

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/rules-when-switching-between-citation-styles/263>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [April 29, 2007, 2:42pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/rules-when-switching-between-citation-styles/263 "2007-04-29T14:42:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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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:** [April 29, 2007, 2:42pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/rules-when-switching-between-citation-styles/263/1 "2007-04-29T14:42:39Z")

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Since John (who has been working on better implementing note style  
citations in Zotero) has been having problems posting to the list, I’ll  
just cc my response for the record …

> Now that putting citations in Zotero footnotes is imminent, a new  
> problem  
> presents itself. The terminal punctuation of a citation in running  
> prose (as  
> often in footnotes) can be different from that of stand-alone  
> citations. In  
> author-date style, a footnote might read
> 
> The major sources are (Cohen 1964) and (Ansley 2000).
> 
> but a Chicago notes-without-bibliography style currently produces
> 
> The major sources are I.B. Cohen, “Newton, Hooke and Boyle’s Law;  
> Discovered  
> by Power and Towneley,” Nature 204 (1964). and P.R. Ansley, Philosophy  
> of  
> Robert Boyle (London: Routledge, 2000).
> 
> That period after (1964) should be either a comma or a semicolon. But  
> the  
> CSL defines a period.

Hmm … so I guess we could say the CSL is correct, but only if there  
is a single citation in the note, without any subsequent text.

I guess this is one of those funky details that come up with note  
styles, and we’ll just have to come up with a rule. Since John’s  
implementing it, I’ll defer to his opinion, though my hunch would be we  
could just say:

In note style citations, the final punctuation (usually a period)  
should only be applied in cases of automatically-generated notes. If a  
citation is already in a note with surrounding commentary, the final  
punctuation should be omitted.

Bruce

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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:** [April 29, 2007, 4:54pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/rules-when-switching-between-citation-styles/263/2 "2007-04-29T16:54:58Z")

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> It seems there is a semantic question on the table. Is the final  
> punctuation  
> in a citation something that semantically belongs to the citation or  
> to its  
> position in a body of text?
> 
> I think the second. (Remember that what we are calling note style can  
> be  
> used in the main body of text. See Chicago 15, p. 637, for example.)  
> If I’m  
> right, then the CSL should not define final punctuation and should  
> leave it  
> to the author and his or her citation-processing software.

I really don’t have a strong opinion and could go either way. That  
said, I do want my formatting software to take care of the punctuation  
for me 😉

> The alternative is to give the processing software the task of  
> modifying CSL  
> formatting. This seems bad.

This I didn’t follow.

> That said, I can think of one example where the processing should  
> modify the  
> format, the moving of a final period or comma to within final quotation  
> marks. But here the typographic consideration is clearly a semantic  
> violation (Strunk and White; Chicago 15, 242). So the word-processing  
> software is not second guessing the semantic-based formatting (as  
> would be  
> happening above), but intentionally overriding it, and some authors  
> and some  
> processing software might legitimately reject this violation.

Yeah, I think some of these details will just take some  
trial-and-error. Another reason why I’d like to see if can get some  
smart semantic markup in notes.

> I think I can make Zotero work either way, either adding punctuation or  
> removing it. Given the CSL is out there, I’ll do the second for now.  
> But I  
> suspect this will have bad long-term implications if we leave it that  
> way.

If you feel strongly about, maybe ask the Zotero guys to change the  
style?

Bruce

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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:** [April 29, 2007, 5:07pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/rules-when-switching-between-citation-styles/263/3 "2007-04-29T17:07:06Z")

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You’re right, that _is_ the goal.

It’s just that the Zotero guys have a few of their styles in their own  
SVN repo. I’d prefer if in the short-run they move them to mine and  
edit them there, but in the long run if we do things right (see  
forthcoming message) I guess it shouldn’t matter where it is.

Bruce