First name / Last name order switched [#401938]

This is probably a stupid beginner's question (I just imported my first biblio entry): I can't figure out how to have the author names displayed either in "FirstName LastName" or "LastName, FirstName" format. What I get for an imported entry with two authors is:

    Last1, First1 and Last2 First2

This kind of formatting I've never seen before. I think it should be either "First2 Last2" or "Last2, First2".

First I though the import went wrong, but in the database all authors are correct with their last name and first name. Am I missing something here?

Comments

Comment #1

rjerome CreditAttribution: rjerome commented 14 March 2009 at 20:55

There are a number of different formats which you can select on the 'admin/settings/biblio' page in the "styling" section. They try to follow (as closely as possible) widely accepted standards for the various citation formats.

I guess it might be useful to provide some examples of each of the formats to make it easier for those not familiar with any particular format to chose one they like.

Although it's not currently possible to modify the look of the output format from the GUI, you can modify it somewhat it the style file itself. There is an array setup at the top of the style file which defines such things as "firsname first/last", shortening the firstname to just an initial and the delimiters which will be used between the names.

Hope that helps,

Ron.

Comment #2

rene_w CreditAttribution: rene_w commented 15 March 2009 at 13:39

Thanks. I did try some of the different citation formats (Settings -> Styling), but I always got the format "Last First" for the (in this case second) author name. I don't think this is correct: e.g., for the "Chicaco" style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html) the second author should be in "First Last" format (or just "Last"), but not "Last First".

For example, in Chicago style, a book by "Barack Obama and George Bush" ("Our adventures in presidenting") should be formatted as "Obama, Barack and George Bush" or as "Barack Obama and George Bush", but never as "Obama, Barack and Bush George", which is what I get from Biblio. Same for other styles, like Vancouver.

Comment #3

rjerome CreditAttribution: rjerome commented 15 March 2009 at 16:12

I see now what you are saying and there was a little bug which has now been corrected (thank you for pointing that out). The fix will be in the next release which will probably be within the week.

By the way, in my opinion, there are no stupid questions. As you can see, in this case your question brought to my attention a silly little mistake on my part which I hadn't noticed.

Cheers,

Ron.