# Terms

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/terms/822>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [February 15, 2010, 2:49am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/terms/822 "2010-02-15T02:49:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jerome\_Ron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/43a26b/32.png) [@Jerome\_Ron](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Jerome_Ron)\
**Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 2:49am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/terms/822/1 "2010-02-15T02:49:00Z")

</div>

I hate to be a PITA, but is there any reason in locales files that, for instance,

```
<single>book</single>

<multiple>books</multiple>

```

bk.

isn’t represented like this…

```
<single>book</single>

<multiple>books</multiple>

<short>bk.</short>

```

It would make parsing the file a whole lot easier.

Ron.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**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:** [February 15, 2010, 3:02am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/terms/822/2 "2010-02-15T03:02:22Z")

</div>

> I hate to be a PITA, but is there any reason in locales files that, for  
> instance,
> 
> ```
> <single>book</single>
> 
> <multiple>books</multiple>
> 
> ```
> 
> bk.
> 
> isn’t represented like this…
> 
> ```
> <single>book</single>
> 
> <multiple>books</multiple>
> 
> <short>bk.</short>
> 
> ```
> 
> It would make parsing the file a whole lot easier.

You could also have …

 book books bk. bks.

… which would be tough to represent in a single node with just one  
level of nesting.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jerome\_Ron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/43a26b/32.png) [@Jerome\_Ron](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Jerome_Ron)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2010, 1:29am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/terms/822/3 "2010-02-20T01:29:36Z")

</div>

What about…

bk.  
bks.  
book  
books

IMHO, this would be more consistent and greatly simplify the parsing of terms.

Ron.\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_  
From: Frank Bennett [@Frank_Bennett]  
Sent: Sunday, February 14, 2010 10:02 PM  
To: development discussion for xbiblio  
Subject: Re: [xbiblio-devel] Terms

On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 11:49 AM, Jerome, Ron \<@Jerome\_Ron\> wrote:

> I hate to be a PITA, but is there any reason in locales files that, for  
> instance,
> 
> ```
> <single>book</single>
> 
> <multiple>books</multiple>
> 
> ```
> 
> bk.
> 
> isn’t represented like this…
> 
> ```
> <single>book</single>
> 
> <multiple>books</multiple>
> 
> <short>bk.</short>
> 
> ```
> 
> It would make parsing the file a whole lot easier.

You could also have …

 book books bk. bks.

… which would be tough to represent in a single node with just one  
level of nesting.

> ## Ron.
> 
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---

<div class="post-metadata">

**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:** [February 20, 2010, 1:43am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/terms/822/4 "2010-02-20T01:43:05Z")

</div>

> What about…
> 
> bk.  
> bks.  
> book  
> books
> 
> IMHO, this would be more consistent and greatly simplify the parsing of terms.

Certainly simpler to parse, but this change would raise a problem in  
schema validation. The current schema guarantees that explicitly  
singular and plural terms always come in matched pairs. You would  
lose that guarantee, so the implementation would need to cope with  
mismatched items gracefully. I think you’d find that results in  
things getting complicated all over again.