Handling of URLs in bibliography

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joseph_anton
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Handling of URLs in bibliography

Post by joseph_anton »

I'm using Bookends and Mellel to generate a bibliography and am providing URLs for the materials I reference wherever possible. In some cases, the URL comes at the end of a line and is splint into two parts. This is fine from a visual point of view, but has the side-effect that the URL is broken. Of course, it's possible for the reader to cut and paste the two parts of the URL to get to the material, but I wonder if there is any smarter way of handling this?

I should note that the bibliography style I am using requires me to have a hanging indentation after the first line.
Icelander
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Re: Handling of URLs in bibliography

Post by Icelander »

joseph_anton wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 12:43 pm In some cases, the URL comes at the end of a line and is splint into two parts. This […] has the side-effect that the URL is broken.
I personally prefer to have the URL on an own separate line. That prevents it from breaking, to me it looks more appealing and it sets it clearly off visually from other parts of the reference.

If the URL is very long I use the application Short Menu <https://shortmenu.com/mac/> to shorten it.

In order to preserve the hanging indentation, I

1) insert "~π~z" (without the quotes) at the end of the book field in Bookends; "z" represents the URL field in Bookends, and "π" is an arbitrary character to mark the beginning of the URL
2) After the document has been scanned, I assign the bibliography a paragraph style with hanging indentation.
3) Then load a FindSet with two Find Actions which I both select and run in one go:
a) One replaces "π" with Line Break and the other
b) finds all URLs in the bibliography, reduces the size to Times 8 and colors them dark blue.
joseph_anton
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Re: Handling of URLs in bibliography

Post by joseph_anton »

Thanks for sharing your workflow, Icelander! It is very good of you to take the time to put together this write-up.

I'm constrained for the moment by the MLA Style Guide's recommendations for dealing with URLs, so I won't be able to follow your advice in full this time round. If you're curious to see what the latest thinking from the MLA on dealing with URLs is, here's a recent write-up: https://style.mla.org/urls-some-practical-advice/

For now, I think I will be mostly able to solve this issue by manually moving each URL that gets broken onto the next line.
Icelander
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Re: Handling of URLs in bibliography

Post by Icelander »

I'm constrained for the moment by the MLA Style Guide's recommendations for dealing with URLs
But as you say yourself, these guidelines are *recommendations* and not a law. I guess this ultimately depends on your doctoral advisor. The MLA Handbook 8th edition recommends the inclusion of URLs, but adds "if your instructor prefers that you not include them, follow his or her directions." (63)

Mea culpa! I forgot that everything in the thesis should be in 12p, including URLs. :oops:

Usually URLs are clickable and colorless when a document is exported from Mellel as PDF. I found out that if a very long URL which breaks is made clickable in Mellel via Insert menu –> Hyperlink *before* the document is exported, then the link doesn't break! The only downside is that the URL is then blue and underlined. So you and your doctoral advisor have to make up your minds as to what is more important: a broken link or a clickable blue underlined link, like we see when we browse the Internet.
I think I will be mostly able to solve this issue by manually moving each URL that gets broken onto the next line.
Unfortunately this does not seem to work for very long URLs. I have a number of URLs that look like this:

https://books.google.de/books?id=eUGsAA ... +Narren%22+
englisch&source=bl&ots=Si0Z1xgQez&sig=07g84gGmoogNMwozGbZhnUScBNc&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIjt299OLJAhXJXCwKHT-sC7IQ6AEIZTAK#v=onepage&q=%22Hoffen%20und%20Harren%20macht%20manchen%20zum%20Narren%22%20englisch&f=false>


They will break unless they are made clickable before the document is exported.
Last edited by Icelander on Tue Nov 06, 2018 2:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Icelander
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Re: Handling of URLs in bibliography

Post by Icelander »

I just skimmed the article by Angela Gibson; I truncated the long URL I mentioned earlier, and it worked!
I have always used 'Short Menu' to shorten URLs, so I have never thought much about this until now. :lol:
joseph_anton
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Re: Handling of URLs in bibliography

Post by joseph_anton »

Thank you Icelander. The MLA has guidance somewhere with regard to URL shortening services - the recommendation is that they should not be used, as there is no guarantee a particular service (like Bitly) will be around in the long term. The exceptions are things like JSTOR stable links and DOIs, which I think are believed to be safer for long-term reference. I just learned that there is also a tool called Perma.cc (https://perma.cc/) for creating "perma links," which seems to have the backing of the universities.
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