Sbl-Handbook-of-Style

Using styles is a great way to ensure consistent formatting in a Word document. But, here’s a way to turn these styles into “direct” formatting.

The SBLHS, 2nd ed., defers to IATG, 3rd ed. for abbreviations that SBLHS doesn’t include. Follow these steps to make working with IATG as seamless as possible.

Citation managers like Zotero can simplify how you reference series. But what a citation manager puts out is only as good as what you put into it.

SBL style has a specific way to cite individually paginated articles from electronic journals. But Zotero can handle those citations too.

There are more up-to-date translations of the fathers. But if you do use ANF or NPNF, Zotero can handle SBL style’s special citation format.

You might think citing a grammar according to the “SBL Handbook of Style” would be straightforward. It is, but there are several special cases to account for.

SBL style prescribes different citation formats for encyclopedias, lexicons, and dictionaries. Zotero can handle these formats if you know how.

The guidance about page number placement in the “Student Supplement for the 𝘚𝘉𝘓 𝘏𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘵𝘺𝘭𝘦” is mostly clear. But some of it takes some guesswork.

SBL style shares much with Chicago but also has many details specific to biblical studies. Here’s a 7-step checklist to help you master SBL style.

The “Student Supplement to the SBL Handbook of Style” can be helpful for classes. For anything not in a higher authority, see the 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘨𝘰 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘵𝘺𝘭𝘦.

The “SBL Handbook of Style” is a great resource but doesn’t include everything. Two other sources are necessary authorities for abbreviations and spelling.

Daily Gleanings about Paul, the Law, and PDF versions of the “SBL Handbook of Style.”

I’ve been grateful to be able to materially update two prior posts with additional content: Publication Year Ranges in Zotero: Previously, this post described how to get Zotero to produce the proper output when citing a series or multivolume work as a whole that was published over a range of years. The prior post version, however, was only able to address this for ranges of years that already had an end date. But with thanks to Brenton Wiernik on the Zotero forums, I’ve been able to update the post to describe how to get the output required if the year range doesn’t yet have an end. This is useful when citing series that are still being published (e.g., the Göttingen Septuagint). Get Strack and Billerbeck via Internet Archive: Previously, this post identified how to access on Internet Archive volumes 1–3 of Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck’s Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch. But these volumes represent only half of Strack and Billerbeck’s commentary. Happily, Ronald van der Bergh mentioned that he had found another page on Internet Archive that provides a combined file of volumes 1–4. I’ve now included a link in the post to this additional file. If anyone comes across volume 5 or 6, do please leave a comment with where you found them, and I’ll be happy to update the post further.

After a house style, SBL Press itself provides the next two highest-level authorities for SBL style—namely, the SBLHS blog and the SBLHS itself.

The SBL Handbook of Style doesn’t include everything. There are seven main SBL style authorities, including your school’s house style.

The 𝘚𝘉𝘓 𝘏𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘵𝘺𝘭𝘦 doesn’t include everything. There are seven main SBL style authorities, starting with a publisher’s house style.

With Zotero, it can be tricky to get proper citations when author names have “Jr.,” “III,” etc. Here’s how to ensure you get their names output correctly.

CMS17 eliminates the use of “ibid.” SBLHS2 follows suit but does have a slightly different convention for how to format notes where “ibid.” would have appeared.

At present, Zotero’s “date” field doesn’t properly handle publications made over a range of years (e.g., 1950–1960).((Header image provided by Zotero via Twitter.)) Instead of including the full range in the corresponding note or bibliography entry, only the first year of the range would be presented (e.g., 1950). If the Range Has an End There is, however, a workaround that depends on entering the following syntax in an item’s “extra” field: issued: [first year]/[last year]. Thus, for example, if the extra field has issued: 1950/1960, Zotero would properly output a range of publication dates (thus: “1950–1960”). ...

With the release of the 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, SBL style now defers to this edition in certain circumstances.

I’ve recently had a discussion over at the Zotero forums that brought to light a couple interesting points that I hadn’t been aware of: There’s currently in beta a major update to Zotero 5.0, which includes several important feature changes. The beta isn’t quite ready for prime time yet but should be “very soon.” Included in this update is the new Citation Style Language (CSL) processor that should remedy the comma and period placement issue in the forum thread. Frank Bennett has provided an updated CSL processor that can be installed in a current Zotero 4 version via the Propachi Vanilla plugin. For additional discussion of Zotero here, see this tag. ...

The SBLHS blog has a helpful discussion on the use of “and” or “but” at the start of a sentence. And they are permissible. But one should use them sparingly. For the full and very helpful post, please see the SBLHS blog.

SBL Press has clarified its guidance about citing J.-P. Migne’s Patrologia Latina based on the discovery that various year’s printings of certain volumes within Patrologia Latina have differences. Among these differences are variations in the column arrangements for the texts contained in Patrologia Latina. The Press’s initial recommendation was that authors always check a PL volume title page to ensure that the printing is dated 1865 or earlier. If the publication or printing date is 1868 or later, we encourage authors to find an earlier printing of PL to cite. ...

There’s some fun to be had in hunting up references to and citing instances where volumes from Migne’s Patrologia latina exist in different versions. The folks at SBL Press have kindly resolved the mystery. Most significantly, SBL Press notes, According to the Patrologia Latina Database … , PL’s printing history can be divided into two distinct periods. Jacques-Paul Migne initially published the 217 volumes of PL over a twelve-year period, 1844–1855. Migne reprinted volumes as needed for another decade, then sold the rights to the Paris publisher Garnier. Unfortunately, in February 1868 a fire destroyed Migne’s presses and printing plates, which meant that Garnier, which had begun reprinting some PL volumes in 1865, was the only source for future reprints—all of which were produced on plates other than Migne’s originals. These plates differed substantially in some cases and are considered in general “inferior in a number of respects to Migne’s own first editions.” ...

According to SBL Handbook of Style, 2nd ed., §§1, 3, 4.3.6, supports the use of “ibid.” From those descriptions, conventions look to be the same as for the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed., §14.29. As an easy (and free) reference for students, SBL also provides a Student Supplement to the SBLHS. One of the courses I’ve been teaching has a comparatively heavier emphasis on getting to know the nuts-and-bolts of SBL style. And a keen-eyed student, pointed out that page 4 of the Student Supplement has consecutively numbered footnotes 78 and 79. Both notes are for the same source, but the second (note 79) does not use the “ibid.” notation. ...

There are a pair of references in Cranfield’s ( affiliate disclosure) and Moo’s ( affiliate disclosure) Romans commentaries to comments by Ambrosiaster about the origin of the Christian community in Rome, and I’ve been curious to give this reference a look. Both authors cite the reference as found in J.-P. Migne’s Patrologia latina, vol. 17, col. 46 (Cranfield, xiii, 17n2; Moo, 4n7). ...

SBL Press has some helpful clarifications about citations in the footnote-bibliography, or traditional, style.

Microsoft Word ties footnote anchors in the main text and footnote numbers at the start of footnotes to the same style. Consequently, it’s difficult to get full-height footnote numbers followed by a period (cf. Chicago Manual of Style, SBL Handbook of style). The process for getting this result discussed at Word MVPs does not seem to work in Word v16. But Word’s InsertFootnoteNow function can be intercepted to add the following macro commands to produce this result: ...