biblatex-mla isn't compatible with MLA 3rd Edition/Handbook 7th Edition style guidelines

[nathantypanski]

Hi,

I'm a user of both biblatex-mla and mla13 packages from your GitHub. One thing I've noticed with biblatex-mla is that journal sources don't have parentheses around the date, as specified in the An Article in a Scholarly Journal section at Purdue OWL.

You'll also notice that it includes a comma after the journal volume/issue number (it shouldn't).

Additionally, it expects a url field even though the latest edition of MLA style requests absence of URLs in most cases. One of the consequences of this is that even if I set a urldate (which MLA style still requests) and change the howpublished field to Web, it will not print my urldate at the end of my citation.

I'm an avid LaTeX user, although I have little experience writing Biblatex styles, but if you'd like any help in diagnosing and fixing these issues, I'll be glad to help. I have a 20-page MLA style paper due by the end of the month, and it is my goal to get proper MLA 3rd Edition citations working by then.

[jmclawson]

Thanks for contacting me on this issue. I should be clear, though, that mla13 is not my package; I've just forked it from the original author in order to suggest updates to it for compatibility with an upcoming release of biblatex-mla (which I'm very glad you find useful).

I am quite familiar with the MLA Handbook in its recent edition. For this reason, biblatex-mla will not print the URL by default (since, as you point out, "the MLA style requests absence of URLs in most cases"). Try adding an address in the url field. It will style everything for you without your having to use the howpublished field: biblatex-mla will, by default, omit the URL, add the word "Web," print the urldate, and (if you're using the hyperref package) turn the word "Web" into a hyperlink to the URL in your resulting PDF file. In those instances where you do require the URL to be printed, the noremoteinfo entry option and package option (both of which will be working more effectively in the next release) give you the flexibility to add the URL in an individual entry or to every entry in a bibliography, respectively.

As for your other issue with parenthesis around the date and a comma after the volume/number, I can't recreate this problem. On my machine, articles print in a way that looks exactly like that recommended by the MLA. Would you mind copying and pasting an entry from your .bib file that does the things you write about? It may be that there's an edge case I hadn't considered.

[jmclawson]

(As for your final paragraph, thank you for your keen eye and your offer of assistance! As I'm putting the finishing touches on a major update to biblatex-mla, due to be released within the next couple of weeks, I would be very grateful for another tester. I'll be updating the files on the biblatex-mla "Dev" tree (https://github.com/jmclawson/biblatex-mla/tree/dev) right now so you can give the latest updates a spin as you work. Things are a little messy, as I've not fully tidied from my trial-and-error method of coding, but I don't know of any significant bugs. If you do decide to download the updated mla.bbx, mla.cbx, american-mla.lbx, and english-mla.lbx files, you'll probably need to drop them into the same folder as your working document for LaTeX and Biber to find them as they work.)

[kc9jud]

I can report that I'm having the same problem -- dates are not wrapped in parentheses.

From my .bib file:

@article{Babich:2011dg,
author = {Babich, L P and Kudryavtsev, A Yu and Kudryavtseva, M L and Kutsyk, I M},
title = {{Atmospheric gamma-ray and neutron flashes}},
journal = {Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics},
year = {2011},
volume = {106},
number = {1},
pages = {65--76},
month = feb,
doi = {10.1134/S1063776108010056},
language = {English},
rating = {0},
date-added = {2013-04-05T17:23:14GMT},
date-modified = {2013-04-14T00:51:15GMT},
url = {http://link.springer.com/10.1134/S1063776108010056},
local-url = {file://localhost/Users/xxxxxxxx/Library/Application%20Support/Papers2/Articles/2011/Babich/J.%20Exp.%20Theor.%20Phys.%202011%20Babich.pdf},
file = {{J. Exp. Theor. Phys. 2011 Babich.pdf:/Users/xxxxxxxx/Library/Application Support/Papers2/Articles/2011/Babich/J. Exp. Theor. Phys. 2011 Babich.pdf:application/pdf}},
uri = {\url{papers2://publication/doi/10.1134/S1063776108010056}}
}

And the output:

Babich, L P, et al. “Atmospheric gamma-ray and neutron flashes.” Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics 106.1, Feb. 2011: 65–76. Web.

[jmclawson]

The development version of Biblatex-mla (in the "Dev" tree here on GitHub) does not have these problems. Here's the output using the newer version:

L P Babich, et al. “Atmospheric gamma-ray and neutron flashes.” Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics 106.1 (Feb. 2011): 65–76. Web.

According to MLA expectations, you should ideally define the urldate field. Additionally, your month field isn't compatible with Biblatex, which expects a number; in fact, instead of month and year fields, Biblatex prefers the use of a date field.

[nathantypanski]

Thanks for the reply. I'll be installing all these packages today and testing them out. I'll keep you updated.

On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 5:48 AM, jmclawson notifications@github.com wrote:

(As for your final paragraph, thank you for your keen eye and your offer of assistance! As I'm putting the finishing touches on a major update to biblatex-mla, due to be released within the next couple of weeks, I would be very grateful for another tester. I'll be updating the files on the biblatex-mla "Dev" tree ( https://github.com/jmclawson/biblatex-mla/tree/dev) right now so you can give the latest updates a spin as you work. Things are a little messy, as I've not fully tidied from my trial-and-error method of coding, but I don't know of any significant bugs. If you do decide to download the updated mla.bbx, mla.cbx, american-mla.lbx, and english-mla.lbx files, you'll probably need to drop them into the same folder as your working document for LaTeX and Biber to find them as they work.)

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/jmclawson/biblatex-mla/issues/5#issuecomment-16375922 .

[kc9jud]

Hmm... I thought some of those fields looked suspect... unfortunately, this seems to be a result of outputting the .bib file from Papers2 (http://www.papersapp.com/papers/)... I can report it there, if it's really an error. I don't know enough about BibLaTeX to make that call, though. Haha

[kc9jud]

I'm still having this problem, even with the latest clone from the repository -- here's my log output:

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[jmclawson]

Can you provide me with a minimal working example? Things are working correctly for me, but if you show me a (single?) .bib file entry and a sample .tex file (as simple as possible), I should be able to see where things are going wrong. You can always email me these files if you'd prefer. My address is my last name (which starts with a C) at Gmail.

[jmclawson]

I think I figured out what's causing your troubles. For some reason, the MLA13 package redefines the issue+date macro to remove parenthesis on line 81, thereby making the resulting bibliography deviate from MLA expectations. I can request that redefinition be deleted from his package; if I were you, I would first check to see if things turn out correctly by dropping the MLA13 package from the .tex file.

[kc9jud]

Commenting out that definition in mla13.sty fixed it! Thanks!

I'll submit a pull request to fix this in mla13.

On Apr 24, 2013, at 11:53, jmclawson notifications@github.com wrote:

I think I figured out what's causing your troubles. For some reason, the MLA13 package redefines the issue+date macro to remove parenthesis on line 81, thereby making the resulting bibliography deviate from MLA expectations. I can request that redefinition be deleted from his package; if I were you, I would first check to see if things turn out correctly by dropping the MLA13 package from the .tex file.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[jmclawson]

I'm glad you got it fixed!