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CSL Style Structure

A CSL style consists of the following elements:

Rendering Elements

They allow the ordering and formatting of  bibliographic metadata elements.

  • Text , which can be a , a , a , or a .
  • Date , which can be the publication or access date, and date parts , for formatting day, month, year or date ranges.
  • Names , for formatting names of authors, editors, publishers.
  • Number , for formatting numeric variables, such as issue or volume numbers.
  • Label , to format certain types of data ("vol." or "volume", for example).
  • Group , to specify delimiters or formatting for a group of elements. Particularly useful to avoid this kind of thing: New York, NY: , 1990, which can occur when one element is missing in the reference (in this case the publisher). 
  • Choose for conditionals (if, else-if, else).