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From: murphy@phri.UUCP (Ellen Murphy)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Need help with weirdo format for bib
Message-ID: <2811@phri.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 22-Jul-87 21:39:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: phri.2811
Posted: Wed Jul 22 21:39:40 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Jul-87 01:48:58 EDT
References: <2808@phri.UUCP> <489@elbereth.rutgers.edu>
Reply-To: murphy@phri.UUCP (Ellen Murphy)
Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 69


In article <2808@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) asks for help with
an unusual bib format, and also complains:
>>         I'm pissed!  I mean, *Jeeze*, why does every single goddamn
>> publisher have to go invent a new and incompatible format for references?

In <489@elbereth.rutgers.edu> cje (Chris Jarocha-Ernst) replies:
>One might make a similar argument against researchers "wasting" their time
>writing an article with correct grammar.  After all, an editor can always
>correct it, right?
 
     Correct grammer is extremely important in conveying information to
the reader.  The placement of punctuation in the reference list, or the
slightly different ways that journals can find to alphabetize the same
list, conveys no information whatsoever.  Unfortunately, journals pay
far less attention to grammar than to the piddly details of citations.

>Most journals in a field follow a reference format agreed to by a
>professional association in that field, not one determined by the whim
>of an editor or publisher.  The association has chosen or developed
>that reference format because they feel it's the one that makes the
>references easiest for their readers to understand (and therefore use,

     Not at all.  In my field (molecular biology) there are about 40
journals that I ought to read, and it is rare to find two that format
the references the same way (the only exceptions are the journals
published by the American Society for Microbiology, one of the many
professional associations in the field).  The publisher, not the
professional associations, decide on these details, and they clearly do
not have their readers' best interests in mind.  If they did, all
citations would include titles and trailing page numbers and would be
listed in alphabetical (not citation) order.  The journals that omit
titles do so to save space (read: money).  I also know of one case in
which the "whim of the editor" decided the citation format (Academic
Press's journal "Plasmid")--and note that other Academic Press journals
are differently formatted.

> Programs like bib were written to free the author from having to keep
>track of every tittle and jot of reference formats, plus reducing the
>amount of time (and thus money) spent on copy editing.  Let the dumb
>machine do the mechanical work like placing semicolons and converting
>to boldface.

    I agree, and bib is great in that it lets me delay the formatting
decision as long as I want, or reformat when a paper is rejected and has
to go elsewhere--not that that ever happens :-).  So why do the copy
editors waste their time adding printers marks to my manuscripts which
are already correctly formatted with respect to boldface and italics?

>If one user at Roy's site is submitting to this journal, presumably other
>users will, too, over time. 

     Just for the record, I'm that user, and the paper is for an obscure
symposium volume that nobody here is ever likely to publish in again.

>There are different reference formats for different purposes, just as there
>are different programming languages for different purposes.

    Changing the placement of commas, semicolons and bold vs. italic
doesn't serve any useful purpose in citation lists, in spite of your
concern that somebody might mistake a volume for a page number.  These
things do make a difference in chemical formulas, genetic nomenclature
and programming languages, and the professional societies have rightly
spent their time developing standards, to which all the journals adhere.
I only wish that somebody would do the same for citation formats.


             Ellen Murphy
             Public Health Research Institute