and while I am updating lots

[kaberett]

There is a special level of hell reserved for people who think this is a readable or otherwise acceptable way to organise their citations:

Jansen, E., J. Overpeck, K.R. Briffa, J.-C. Duplessy, F. Joos, V. Masson-Delmotte, D. Olago, B. Otto-Bliesner, W.R. Peltier, S. Rahmstorf, R. Ramesh, D. Raynaud, D. Rind, O. Solomina, R. Villalba and D. Zhang, 2007: Palaeoclimate. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

(Don't see what I mean? Look at the names. Look again. Now imagine you're copying that shit out.)

Comments

[alexseanchai]

Isn't it supposed to be a name or two, maybe three, then 'et al'?

[kaberett]

Not in the full citation :-) What I'm complaining about is the bit where they do "[lastname], [initial]., [initial]. [lastname], ..." - which is an absolute SHIT to read & copy accurately without getting your bracketing confused (because "[lastname], [initial]." is a more common format than "[initial]. [lastname]," -- and they SWAP WHICH THEY ARE DOING after the first one!).

[alexseanchai]

Ah, okay.

[sorrillia]

Wait, are they doing the first one different from all the others? That would explain why I couldn't make sense of what they are doing, but why would anyone do that?

[kaberett]

THAT IS IN FACT PRECISELY WHAT THEY'RE DOING.

As far as I can tell, they decided to do it that way so that when you're skimming the references for each chapter, you've got the surname of the first author (i.e. the sort category) up & in your face.

Unfortunately they then decided that ALSO "[lastnameA], [intialA]., [lastnameB], [initialB]., ..." is an awful format - WHICH IS ALSO TRUE - and went for the worst possible solution.

[frith_in_thorns]

Ouuuuuuuch.

[untonuggan]

WTF I DON'T EVEN.

/historymajorrant

[kaberett]

THE HEINOUS OFFENDER IS THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE. THEY ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE I HAVE SEEN USING THIS AWFUL CONVENTION. I CAN ONLY ASSUME THAT IT WAS THOROUGHLY HASHED OUT IN ENDLESS COMMITTEES, AND LEFT ABSOLUTELY NOBODY HAPPY.

[untonuggan]

THAT IS THE WAY OF COMMITTEES.

[glass_icarus]

Eyes. Crossing. Forever.