Removing comma before junior using makebst?

[Ted Pavlic]

On page 3 of _The Elements of Style_ by William Strunk Jr. and E.B.
White, it is stated that the "Jr." after a last name should not have a
comma before it (e.g., William Strunk Jr.). A number of journals agree
with this, including _The Journal of Mathematical Biology_.

The only way I can find to remove the comma before "Jr." using makebst
is to use the AUTHOR NAME option:

nm-rvv,%: Surname + spaceless initials

However, I really want:

nm-rvvc,%: Surname + comma + spaceless initials

When I do that, the comma gets inserted before the "Jr.".

I can go into the resulting BST file and hack that comma out. However,
it seems like there should be a better way.

Is there any way to use makebst to generate a BST without this junior
comma?

Thanks --
Ted

[Joseph Wright]

You need to look in the bst file for a line that will look something
like:

s nameptr "{vv~}{ll,}{~jj,}{~f.}" format.name$ 't :=

Probably in a function called format.names. This tells bibtex how to
format the names from the database. The jj part is used to format the
"Jr." or whatever. You probably have "{,~jj}, and want to change it
to {~jj}, I guess. You may need to experiment a bit!

Joseph Wright

[Ted Pavlic]

> You need to look in the bst file for a line that will look something
> like:
>
> s nameptr "{vv~}{ll,}{~jj,}{~f.}" format.name$ 't :=

I know that. That's what I actually did. I manually hacked the comma
out of the BST file.

I was hoping that there would be a way to use merlin.mbs (or another
MBS file) to generate a DBJ driver that would produce a BST file that
does not require manual hacking.

In other words, I really THINK that merlin.mbs needs a new version
that has a

jr-xcb

option (or something) that prevents the before-junior comma.

--Ted

[Joseph Wright]

Oh I see, I didn't realise that. I guess you might be best e-mailing
the author of makebst and making a feature-request.

Joseph Wright

[Ted Pavlic]

On Jun 28, 3:20 pm, Ted Pavlic <ted.pav...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The only way I can find to remove the comma before "Jr." using makebst
> is to use the AUTHOR NAME option:
>
> nm-rvv,%: Surname + spaceless initials
>
> However, I really want:
>
> nm-rvvc,%: Surname + comma + spaceless initials
>
> When I do that, the comma gets inserted before the "Jr.".

In retrospect, it seems like the best way to handle this is to use nm-
rvvc and then change the actual BIB entries to make the "Jr" a part of
the last name (i.e., use curly braces around the Jr and have no
explicit junior part).

Of course, if the published name of an author includes a comma for the
Jr, it *probably* should be left in. I've found journals that
distribute BST files that have manually hacked out the junior comma.
Perhaps these journals should consider asking their authors to modify
their own BIB files rather than distributing a hacked BST...

--Ted