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).