Bibliography to footnote references
I’m switching a set of papers from Chicago notes-bibliography style with full bibliography to Chicago notes-bibliography style without full bibliography. As any fule no, this will mean expanding the first occurence of the reference item in the notes from shortened to full form (among other things).
Since it’s May, and a sunny evening, it’s important to get this done asadp. Some things there are no shortcuts for: it will still be necessary to read through all the footnotes to all the papers. But some things can be speeded up.
Of course, it will be necessary to split the screen and have a copy of the reference list in a third window hack about with. But the crucial thing will be spotting a reference of this form:
Bai Shouyi, Zhongguo Yisilanshi, p. 73 [A shortened reference, gentle reader],
locating the full reference in the reference list, viz.
Bai, Shouyi. Zhongguo Yisilanshi Cungao [Essays on the history of Islam in China]. Yinchuan: Ningxia Renmin Chubanshe, 1983. [Hmm: and querying to the author which is the surname of Bai Shouyi],
and changing it to:
Bai Shouyi, Zhongguo Yisilanshi (Yinchuan: Ningxia Renmin Chubanshe, 1983), p. 73
The only shortcut to be taken here is to write a regular expression to grab the publication details of the reference list entry and set them in parenthesis, with the punctuation right, ready to cut and paste into the footnote. That regular expression (in MS Word) is:
FIND: . (<*>, [0-9]{4}).
REPLACE: _(\1),
[_ marks initial space].
This switches
Bai, Shouyi. Zhongguo Yisilanshi Cungao [Essays on the history of Islam in China]. Yinchuan: Ningxia Renmin Chubanshe, 1983.
to
Bai, Shouyi. Zhongguo Yisilanshi Cungao [Essays on the history of Islam in China] (Yinchuan: Ningxia Renmin Chubanshe, 1983),
THEN
Switch the author names around (be careful for variant name forms):
FIND: ^13<(*)>, <(*)>.
REPLACE: ^p\2 \1,
THEN
Switch the page range from before the now-parenthetical publication details, to the end of the reference after a comma) (nb – we added this comma in ourselves earlier):
, ([0-9]{1,}^=[0-9]{1,}) (\(*\)),
_\2, \1 [NB ‘_’ marks a space]
This switches e.g.: [my bold]
Margot Badran, “Feminism and Conversion,” in Women Embracing Islam, ed. Karin van Niewkerk, 192–229 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006),
to this
Margot Badran, “Feminism and Conversion,” in Women Embracing Islam, ed. Karin van Niewkerk (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), 192–229
THEN
Change ‘edited by’ to ‘ed.’ (nonwildcards find/replace)
Change period–open quote marks after names to comma–open quote marks
FIND: . “
REPLACE: , “
All this is saving valuable keystrokes which, repeated over the 11 papers in my inbox, will slightly reduce the RSI.
But still I guess the communal garden will have to water itself tonight.
Leave a Reply