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).