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Date:         Mon, 9 Jul 90 10:46:09 CET
Reply-To: LaTeX-L Mailing list <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.uucp>
From: N.POPPELIER@ELSEVIER.NL
Subject:      the (in)famous name-year system
To: Rainer Schoepf <BK4@DHDURZ1.uucp>
Status: R
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X-UID: 171

In a previous message I wrote that I was curious about the opinion of
the Chicago Manual of Style on the name-year or author-date system.
Reading through the BibTeX documentation I found an answer:

> The Chicago Manual of Style, on the other hand, espouse the
> author-date system, in which the citation might appear in the text as
> `(Jones, 1986)'.

followed by Oren Patashnik's arguments against using such a system.
He continues:

> What a mess.
> (I have, unfortunately, programmed such a style,
> and if you're saddled with an unenlightened publisher
> or if you don't buy my propaganda,
> it's available from the Rochester style collection.)

On January 1, 1990 I started working for a publisher, so I'm now more
or less familiar with both standpoints: that of the author (having
studied and worked in the University of Utrecht for 11 years) and
that of the publisher.

What is so remarkable about the name-year discussion is this: our
company doesn't force authors to use this system. It's precisely the
other way around:

- our authors force *us* to accept their TeX and LaTeX files (we're
  working on that)
- in the LaTeX case authors expect *us* to give them document styles
  and bibliography styles for both the number system and the author-date
  system.

Anyway: I think an author-date bibliography style should be part of
the new LaTeX 3.0/BibTeX 1.0 package.


Nico Poppelier
Elsevier Science Publishers, PSED, R&D Department
Sara Burgerhartstraat 25, 1055 KV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Phone: +(20)5862504. Fax: +(20)5862425. Email: n.poppelier@elsevier.nl