Coding a bibliography

[butlins]

Does anyone know if there is a standard for using HTML elements to tag a bibliography? I'm using the following at the moment (mostly so I have what I feel is a semantic element to apply an italic style to), but I'm open to suggestions:
<h2>Bibliography</h2>
<p>Balfour, M.C. (1891) Legends of the Cars. <cite>Folklore</cite>, 2, 2, 145-170.</p>
<p>Balfour, M.C. (1891) Legends of the Lincolnshire Cars, Part II. <cite>Folklore</cite>, 2, 3, 257-283.</p>
<p>Balfour, M.C. (1891) Legends of the Lincolnshire Cars, Part III. <cite>Folklore</cite>, 2, 4, 401-418.</p>
<p>Bestall, T.W. (1978) <cite>The Agricultural Revolution in Lincolnshire</cite>, Lincoln, History of Lincolnshire Committee</p>
<p>Carey, R. (1995) <cite>History of the Ancholme Valley Drainage</cite>, unpublished.</p>
<p>Carey, R. (2002) <cite>The Drowned Valley: The Draining of the Ancholme Valley</cite>. In Walton, J. (Ed.) Aspects of Northern Lincolnshire, Barnsley, Wharncliffe Books.</p>
<p>Noort, R. Van de (2004) <cite>The Humber Wetlands</cite>, Bollington, Cheshire, Windgather Press</p>
<p>O’Shaughnessy, P. (Ed.) (1983a) <cite>Twenty-One Lincolnshire Folk-Songs</cite>, Lincoln, Lincolnshire and Humberside Arts.</p>
<p>O’Shaughnessy, P. (Ed.) (1983b) <cite>More Folk Songs from Lincolnshire</cite>, Lincoln, Lincolnshire and Humberside Arts.</p>
<p>Page, C.J. (1969)<cite> History of the Ancholme Navigation</cite>, Lincoln. </p>
<p>Peacock, E. (1887) <cite>The Court Rolls of the Manor of Hibbaldstow</cite>. Archaeological Journal, XLIV, 278-88.</p>
<p>Pearson, M. (2006) <cite>In Comes I: Performance, Memory and Landscape</cite>, Exeter, University of Exeter Press.</p>
<p>Pearson, M. and Shanks, M. (2001) <cite>Theatre/Archaeology</cite>. London and New York, Routledge.</p>

[ahallicks]

That to me would appear to be a list of items on your bibliography so I'd probably have put it in a list of some kind... unordered... definition? I think either would work quite well but I'd probably go for a definition list in this case with the Author as the dt and the names of the [books?] as the dd.

[butlins]

That's a great idea - I can assign a different title for dd elements that contain authors, date, title, publication, volume and edition and pages, and display them inline, so they break nicely:
<dl>
<dt title="author">Balfour, M.C. </dt>
<dd title="publication year>(1891) </dd>
<dd title="title">Legends of the Cars. </dd>
<dd title="publication" class="cite">Folklore,</dd>
<dd title="volume number">2, </dd>
<dd title="edition">2, </dd>
<dd title="pages">145-170.</dd>
...
</dl>

[Arbitrator]

Does anyone know if there is a standard for using HTML elements to tag a bibliography? I'm using the following at the moment (mostly so I have what I feel is a semantic element to apply an italic style to), but I'm open to suggestions:I don’t think that there’s a standard, but I can offer some advice in addition to ahallick’s.

I would guess that entire lines are citations, so it might be more appropriate to mark them (the entire line instead of part of the line) as such with a cite element. If you need styling anchors, then you can always use span elements in conjunction with class attributes. Personally, I would do this in conjunction with an unordered or ordered list instead of a definition list.

<ul>
<li><cite>…</cite></li>
…
</ul>

You might also mark up abbreviations. For example, O’Shaughnessy, P. (Ed.) might become O’Shaughnessy, <abbr title="Patrick">P.</abbr> (<abbr title="Editor">Ed.</abbr>). abbr without the title attribute also works if looking up the abbreviation is too inconvenient.

If you’re into typography, you can also use more precise characters:


145-170 would become 145–170 (with U+2013 En Dash in between)
II would become Ⅱ (U+2161 Roman Numeral Two)
III would become Ⅲ (U+2162 Roman Numeral Three)
XLIV would become ⅩⅬⅣ (U+2169/216c/2163 Roman Numeral Ten/Fifty/Four)
Twenty-One Lincolnshire Folk-Songs would become Twenty‐One Lincolnshire Folk‐Songs (with U+2010 Hyphens)

[butlins]

Thanks - I'd forgotten that <cite> could be nested within a list element. What you're making makes sense, as titles can obviously be applied to span elements too, as well as classes.

I'd started with the <abbr> around the (Ed.), and I'd used <abbr title="roman numeral 44">XLIV</abbr> - but I hadn't made the next step into the typography. Unfortunately I don't know what their first names are - but I can ask my client.

I guess I was asking as I thought that as HTML was originally written and initially developed by academics to share pooled information, and scientific papers always have a list of references at the end, a standard might have evolved.

[Actinia]

A standard for formatting references in print is to use hanging indentation. Your citations would be formatted using something like (assuming the references are in a div with id="Refs"):


#Refs li {text-indent: -2em; margin-left: 2em; }


John Rostron

[butlins]

A standard for formatting references in print is to use hanging indentation.

I've had some experience with design of print versions of scientific journals, so this made me quite nostalgic. I'll probably put the id in the enclosing ul, though, as it's a block level element anyway, and saves creating an extra div.

[Arbitrator]

[…] and I'd used <abbr title="roman numeral 44">XLIV</abbr> […]So far as I’m aware, Roman numerals make up an independent numeric system and are not abbreviations of anything.

Unfortunately I don't know what their first names are - but I can ask my client.I was able to quickly get the name of the source cited in my previous post by doing a Google search for the last name and book title.

[butlins]

Arbitratator, you are quite right - I'd meant to use <dfn title="Roman numeral 44"> as per this article in A List Apart (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/hattrick), (it's about 3/4 of the way down the page) together with the link to the glossary, but I'd been looking at the code for so long I just blanked out.