I’m citing a reference in a comment which is not otherwise cited in the body of my paper. As a consequence, this reference is not picked up when Nisus Writer scans the compiled document. Other than manually adding it to my final bibliography, is there a way I can force a reference to be included in it?
For example, can I insert an “invisible” footnote in my text immediately after my comment? I’m writing in Scrivener, which is where temporary citations are entered. Then I send the compiled output to Nisus Writer, where it’s scanned.
I searched the documentation and this forum, but I didn’t see this discussed. Sorry if I just missed it. Thank you!
Without wondering why you’re trying to include something in the eventual bibliography that is not referenced in the text…
Since you are using NWP and talking of scanning, I presume you are using Bookends as your reference manager? If so I think you have two options:
Include the comment in the compile process, scan the document in NWP, then when the bibliography is in place, go back and remove the comment in NWP. I’ve never done that, but I can’t see any reason it would remove the bibliography entry.
Compile without the comment. Then when you have scanned the document and the bibliography has been created, go to Bookends, find the reference and from the bottom of the window—presuming you have View → Formatted switched on!—copy the formatted reference and paste it into the appropriate place within the bibliography.
(a) If you use Zotero, I don’t know how exactly you’d do that; (b) I’d use the first option as I’d find it less of a hassle.
Thank you, Mark. for your suggestion, which I think will be helpful. I should have mentioned that I’m using Bookends. I wasn’t very smart to leave that out.
FWIW, I’m listing in my bibliography a work that I mention in a footnote, along the lines of “See also blah blah blah.” But the work is otherwise not cited in the body of the paper itself.
Incidentally, one thing I’m trying to avoid is a change I’ll need to remember to make in the final stage of preparing this paper. Not only am I old and forgetful, I also have a tendency to run dozens and dozens of compile-scan-check-correct-repeat sequences. If I make the one-off correction even at a very late stage, then, when I invariably do another sequence at the final, final stage, I may forget to fix the problem again.
Ah, OK. On the first of these posts: if you’re mentioning it in a footnote, why don’t you put the temporary citation in that footnote… “See also blah, blah, blah {Whoever, 2024 #12345}”. Is there any fundamental reason why not?
On the second, I too am old (79) but I hope not too forgetful. I too run “dozens and dozens of compile-scan-check-correct-repeat sequences”. I would keep a check list of any corrections that could only be made post-compile in NWP; all other corrections I make immediately in Scrivener, leading to that repeated compile-check sequence.
Much of what I need to do post-compile is done using a macro in NWP. The only thing that needs to be done by hand (I haven’t been able to macroize it) is to remove the “Normal” attribute from all the footnotes which is imposed by Scrivener and overrides the NWP footnote style setting.
Hi, Mark. Well, I’m not far behind, at least in years, though I have a lot to learn about Scrivener, Bookends and NWP. That’s great you’ve been able to automate so much of the process. I know that there will always be manual clean-up required, but the less, the better, I figure.
I found that if I added a citation to Book X in a footnote, it was (evidently) included in Scrivener’s compilation and properly scanned by NWP. So Book X appeared in my bibliography. I just had to go back to the footnote where I’d inserted it and manually delete it.
Unfortunately, when I inserted the citation in a comment, it wasn’t scanned by MWP (and perhaps wasn’t including in the compilation, either). So, Book X did not appear in the bibliography.
At least I have a better workaround, though. Thanks for your suggestion.
Update (from Jon of Sonny Software over at the Bookends forum):
There are a variety of metacharacters you can place at the beginning of a temporary citation that provide ad hoc tailoring of the final output. Please see the user guide (Help menu) for details. And you can see and apply them with Edit → Copy Citation with Modifiers.
In your case I think you are looking for the ! metacharacter, which tells Bookends to remove it from the scanned document but have the reference appear in the bibliography. Like this:
{!temp cite}
I haven’t been able to test this yet but after I’ve done so, I’ll report back here.
Glad you’ve got a solution. I’ve never tried putting a cite in a comment so I don’t know if Bookends scan in NWP includes comments in its scope, but reading the guide (see below) it looks to me as if it doesn’t. The other possibility is that your compile format removes comments and annotations (under the gear menu on the right-hand pane of the compile dialog).
That said, I had never looked into metacharacters in Bookends, so thank you for contacting Jon. Took a little bit of finding (on p. 273 of the user guide!). Some of the other options provided by metacharacters look interesting to me.
My use of all this is purely personal, with no intent of publication.
Great that you found the solution thanks to Jon’s timely support. Modifiers are super useful; also remember that Bookend’s cool floating reference UI can access modifiers (⌃⌘Y):
Thank you, nontroppo. I had not been using the floating citation feature, and I see that it’s a nifty way to use Bookends. I’d been just dragging a citation from Bookends into the footnote space created in Scrivener, but sometimes my mousing wouldn’t be very accurate, and the citation would fail to land in the designated spot.
