Terry's TMG Tips

Removing "Hereinafter cited as..."

This page revised 16 Mar 2006

Version note: Applies to TMG 8 & 9

This article describes how to remove the tiresome phrase at the end if each full footnote that starts with "hereinafter cited as..."

This is part of a series of articles on minor changes all users might want to make to the standard Source Types provided with TMG. These changes are designed to enhance the operation of the default Source Category for new Projects, those drawn from Elizabeth Shown Mills' Evidence!: Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian.

If you want to try these suggested modifications and are not familiar with editing the Output Templates of Source Types, you may find my article on Working with Source Templates helpful.

The Issue

Most of the standard Source Types include in their full footnote the phrase "Hereinafter cited as" then the short title of the source. Many users, including me, find this wording "stuffy" and unnecessary. This wording is not included in any of Ms Mills' examples, and as I understand, is recommended in modern style guides only when the short title (the one used in subsequent footnotes) is so different from the full title the reader is not likely to recognize it. In practice, I've never found the need to create a short title that I thought a reader might not recognize.

I have removed this phrase from all the Source Types I use, and recommend other users to the same. Doing so is pretty easy – the following section tells how.

The Solution

Simply remove the term in the Full Footnote template that produces this phrase. You need to do that for each Source Type in which you want the phrase removed. Here are the steps:

  1. From the Tools menu, choose Source Types to open the Source Types list.
  2. Select the Source Type you want to modify, and click the Edit button.
  3. In the output template field for the Full Footnote, look for a phrase similar to the following:
    <. Hereinafter cited as [SHORT TITLE]>
    <. Hereinafter cited as "[SHORT ARTICLE TITLE]">
    <. Hereinafter cited as [ITAL:][SHORT TITLE][:ITAL]>
    Note that the name of the short title Source Element will vary depending on the specific Source Type involved, and that there may or may not be quote marks or Italics codes surrounding it.
  4. Carefully delete the entire phrase enclosed by the angle brackets (called conditional brackets in TMG), as well as the angle brackets themselves.
  5. Click the OK button to save your changes.

You may want to open a Source that uses this Source Type, go to the Output Template tab, and click the Preview button to check your work. Or run a report that uses a Source of this type and check your work that way.

If you want to make the same change on other Source Types you use, repeat the above steps for each of them.

The steps above change the default Template for the Source Type, and thus are effective for all Sources you have entered in the past, or enter in the future, using this Source Type. But there is one important exception. If you have modified the Output Template of a Source of this type "locally," that is, in the Source Definition screen for that Source, it will not be changed by editing the Source Type – it no longer uses the default Template. You will need to make the same edit for those Sources individually if you want to change them.

Other Topics in This Series

Accommodating Copies of Sources – dealing with copies of original sources

Adding Given Names to Short Footnotes – when you have multiple Sources authored by poeple with the same surname

 


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