MLA Formatting Issues When Biblio Entry Has Editors but No Authors [#1827394]

Posted by backlineinteractive on October 30, 2012 at 8:00pm

4 followers

Issue Summary

I'm currently using the MLA style with Biblio with the CiteProc module disabled (I've found the built in MLA format to be closer to what I'm expecting for MLA than the CiteProc version). For an entry that has multiple editors but no authors, I'd expect to see something like the example below:

Lucas, John S., and Paul C. Southgate, eds. Aquaculture: Farming Aquatic Animals and Plants. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Print.

Instead, I'm not seeing the descriptive label of 'eds.'

Lucas, John S., and Paul C. Southgate, eds. Aquaculture: Farming Aquatic Animals and Plants. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Print.

Any guidance as to why that might be the case? I took a peek at biblio_style_mla.inc and it looks like some of the block related to editor formatting is being ignored, but I'm not sure why.

I'm happy to provide more detail, just let me know.

Comments

#1

Posted by rjerome on October 31, 2012 at 1:49am

What "type" of publication is it? it would appear from the MLA style code that editors are not printed Journal Article, Newspaper Article or Magazine Article

#2

Posted by backlineinteractive on November 1, 2012 at 4:05pm

It is a book. And I am seeing the editors listed, just not the descriptive label of 'eds.' So I'm seeing something like this:

Lucas, John S., and Paul C. Southgate Aquaculture: Farming Aquatic Animals and Plants. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Print.

When I'd expect to see:

Lucas, John S., and Paul C. Southgate, eds. Aquaculture: Farming Aquatic Animals and Plants. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Print.

#3

Posted by pkiff on November 2, 2012 at 11:02am

Just double-checking here: have you got your authors assigned as "Secondary Authors"? Not sure if 7.x-1x-dev works the same as 6.x in this regard, but if it does, then the appearance of the "editor" text is affected by whether authors are assigned as "Primary Authors" or "Secondary Authors". And you may run into additional quirks if you have any "Corporate Authors" listed along with them. If your authors are in the "Primary Author" field, then they won't have an "editor" label attached to them. Simply moving the authors over to the "Secondary Author" field should cause the editor label to appear.

Phil.

#4

Posted by backlineinteractive on November 2, 2012 at 4:49pm

Thanks Phil - It is helpful to know that the primary or secondary setting will have in impact on how this is rendered, although I still don't think it resolves my specific issue. When the editors are set as primary they are listed at the front of the entry, but without 'eds.' When listed as secondary they are listed at the end of the entry. I'm expecting to see them at the front with 'eds.'. I suppose this could be misinterpreting what I should be expecting for MLA. Any idea which version of MLA this formatting is based on?

#5

Posted by pkiff on November 4, 2012 at 2:56am

It looks to me like you are right: this appears to be a bug with either the MLA style (non-CiteProc version) or with how biblio identifies authors for the book type.

My suggestion to move authors to Secondary Author field I think was incorrect. For some types of publications, that would be correct, but for whole books, the Secondary Author field is treated by biblio as the "Series Editor" not the Book editor. That would explain why those authors are given an editor tag, but positioned after the title: that is where you would expect the series editor(s) to appear, if you included it in your MLA citation.

I tested this against a 6.x version of biblio, and got the same results as backlineinteractive describes when trying to display a book with editors (and no primary author) in the MLA style.

There may not be a designated biblio field to contain editors of a book that does not have a standard "Primary Author", and I'm not sure how you can identify your Primary Authors as being editors. Maybe Ron will have some suggestions for a workaround.

#6

Posted by backlineinteractive on November 17, 2012 at 11:21pm

Just checking back in to see if there might be any workaround for this issue. Thanks.

#7

Posted by rjerome on November 18, 2012 at 2:22am

If it`s any consolation, I know why the CiteProc version of MLA is not working properly. The csl definition should produce what you want, but my CSL parser is missing the `substitute`element, so it`s not putting the editors where the authors would have been (at the beginning). I really have no plans to support the "old" styles, so I'll try to fix the citeproc processor ASAP.

#8

Posted by backlineinteractive on November 20, 2012 at 3:01pm

Thanks. From my work thus far I've found that the CiteProc version of MLA had more formatting issues than the 'old' styles which was why I ended up turning off Citeproc. I'll try to submit the other CiteProc related MLA issues when I get a chance. I'd gladly switch back to CiteProc in the future.