References

References

What are references?

In brief:

References are generated by Concordance from mark-up you add to your text. They show you which section of your text each word comes from, or let you mark text as belonging to any category you define.

References can accompany each line of context in a concordance, and might look like this:

Macbeth Act 1 Scene 1 First Witch

Or like this:

Speaker: Alistair Session : 20 August Topic: Apoptosis

You can also select text using references. For example, you could select all text by a particular speaker. See below

Concordance automatically gives the line number as a reference for each occurrence of each word. If this is all you need, you don't have to define any references of your own.

If you have multiple files and want to use the filenames as a reference, Concordance can add them automatically. See below.

You can also add Page references for Microsoft Word files

Take a little time to learn how to use references, as they are one of the most powerful aspects of the software. A good way to get started with references is to work through the sample files which were installed with the program.

The References Dialog on the Text Menu lets you specify the way references are handled. You must also add the references you want to your source text. This can be as simple as adding <C Chapter 1> at the right point in your text.

Uses of references

A reference can be generated for each line of context in a concordance. It is often used to indicate the location of the word and its illustrative context in the full source text. A simple reference might show whch section or chapter of a text each word comes from. References can also show any other information you want to include.

In drama, for example, you might choose to have your concordance show which character is the speaker at any point, whether the speech is prose or verse, and which act and scene each word belongs to. Or if you were analysing transcripts of interviews, you could add tags to show which material is relevant to Topic A, which to Topic B, and so on. Several reference categories can be in force at any time, so a piece of text can be marked as relevant to several different topics.

If you have many different texts or authors combined in your concordance, you can use references to distinguish between them.

When your concordance is made and displayed, the references will be displayed for each word in its context, and you can sort the contexts by the references you have used.

If you don't want to use references of your own, you need not define any. Concordance automatically keeps track of the line number in which each word occurred, and this provides a form of referencing which is adequate for simple projects.

Reference Markers and Categories

Reference markers are symbols which you use in your source text to enclose references. For example,
<T Macbeth>
<A Act 1>
<S Scene 1>
<C First Witch>
Here < and > are the opening and closing reference markers. You can choose other markers if you wish. Opening and closing reference markers must each be a single character, but need not be a 'matched pair', so you could choose { and # , for example.

In the above example the letters T, A, S, and C denote reference categories which can be collected and printed. You can use any letters from A to Z. Concordance doesn't care which letters you use for what. Only you have to remember what you're using them to stand for as you mark up the text.

The example above would produce a reference like this:

Macbeth Act 1 Scene 1 First Witch

- assuming you told Concordance to collect all four reference categories T, A, S, and C.

To take another example, if you later decide that you want only the act and scene references, you don't have to alter anything in your text: just make a new concordance, telling Concordance to collect only reference categories A and S. That would produce a reference like this:
Act 1 Scene 1

A reference stays in force until you change it. So, at the start of Scene 2, you could add <S Scene 2> and all words from there on would have "Scene 2" as part of their reference, until another reference with the category <S > is found, such as <S Scene 3>.

If you want to stop using a reference category before the end of a text, set it empty like this: <S >

Preparing References

When adding references to a source text, follow these rules:

References can appear anywhere on a line.

References can be changed as often as needed in the course of any line.

References cannot occur inside a word.

The reference opening marker should be immediately followed by the reference category letter, then a space, then the text of the reference.

Each reference must end (close) on the same line it began on.

The program will try to warn you if the last of these rules is broken. If your text breaks the third and fourth rules, unpredictable results can occur.

Collecting References

In the References Dialog under 'References to collect' you enter the letters from A to Z which your input text uses to identify reference categories and which you wish to collect when you next make a concordance. You can choose to collect some, all, or none of the references from the source text on any particular run.

Order of display for references

It does not matter in what order you enter the letters in the Reference dialog. When Concordance displays your references, it will use the order in which it first encountered reference categories in your text. For instance, using the Macbeth example above, if you wanted references displayed with the character first, like this,

First Witch Macbeth Act 1 Scene 1

you should make sure that the character reference is the first to appear in your text, like this:

<C First Witch>
<T Macbeth>
<A Act 1>
<S Scene 1>

In cases where this does not make good sense, you can include empty references to get you started and achieve the required order. An empty reference looks like this: <C >

Example: Numerals in references

The program treats literally any text you place inside your reference markers (that is, to the right of the space after the reference category letter and before the closing reference marker). Numerals are treated no differently from any other text. So, for example, if your text had two subsections, each with two paragraphs, you might want references like this: "1, 1", "1, 2", "2, 1", "2, 2". To achieve this, you could mark up your text as follows:

<S 1,>
<P 1>
text of first paragraph in section 1
<P 2>
text of second paragraph in section 1

<S 2,>
<P 1>
text of first paragraph in section 2
<P 2>
text of second paragraph in section 2

Then tell Concordance to collect reference categories S and P. Note that we can get a comma between section number and paragraph number by including it after the section number: "<S 1,>"

You must also make sure that any characters you want to use in your references (in this case, the numerals 0 to 9) are in Concordance's Alphabet.

Example: Page references for indexes

A macro for Microsoft Word to insert Concordance-style page references automatically into a Word document is here.

Displaying References

References are displayed to the right of contexts. The first example above would produce a reference like this:
Macbeth Act 1 Scene 1 First Witch

By choosing Show Reference Categories on the Contexts menu, you can choose to display them like this instead:
<T Macbeth><A Act 1><S Scene 1><C First Witch>

This is useful when you want to sort contexts by reference categories. That sort method, however, still works even if reference categories are not being displayed.

References and the Alphabet

Remember that characters in your source text which are not in your user-defined alphabet will be removed entirely from your concordance if you have chosen to ignore them in the Alphabet dialog. This applies even if the characters occur inside reference markers. Make sure you add any special characters you need to your alphabet, or choose to have all characters not in the Alphabet automatically added. See the Alphabet dialog.

Overlap between Alphabet, Word Separators, and Reference Markers

If a character is in your Alphabet, it cannot also be a Word Separator or a Reference Marker. If you have any duplication of this kind, the program will warn you (repeatedly!), and will not make a concordance until you remove the duplication. To alter the Alphabet or Word Separators, go to the Alphabet dialog.

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Selecting text using references

Once your have marked up your text with some references, they can be used not just for display in your concordance but also to select text when using Make Fast Concordance.

The lower half of the References dialog lets you choose up to two reference categories and their values. The two can be combined with the usual boolean operators: 'and', 'or', 'xor', 'and not'. ('Xor' -- exclusive or -- means 'either A or B but not both'.)

For example, if your text was marked up with references like this:

<T Macbeth>
<A Act 1>
<S Scene 1>
<C First Witch>

you could make a concordance which picks words only when the Act is 1 and the speaker is First Witch. Or if your text had page numbers, you could select only the text where the page number was 2.

Example: selecting text by speaker

Assume you want to select all text where the speaker is Mary, rejecting all text by other speakers.

First you must mark up your text with references, so that a reference such as <S Mary> precedes each speech by Mary, and a reference such as <S Someone Else> precedes each speech not by Mary.

Now open the Make Fast Concordance dialog. Under Word Selection Method, select the radio button next to Reference, then press the adjacent Edit button. This opens the References dialog. In the upper part of the dialog, ensure you have chosen < and > as the reference opening and closing markers, and include S as a reference category to collect. In the lower part of the dialog, set the controls so as to "Select text when reference category S is the string Mary". Then press OK to close the References dialog and press the Make Fast Concordance button.

Filename References

When you make a concordance to more than one file, you can choose to have Concordance automatically add a reference to show which file a word came from. The reference will be the name of the file. To make this happen, open the 'Make Concordance from Files' dialog (press F5) and tick Add filenames as refs. Filename references are not automatically added if there is only one active file.

Filename references are independent of, and additional to, the references you define in the References dialog on the Text menu.

See also:
Preparing text
Saving and restoring settings
Page references for Microsoft Word files
Make Fast Concordance

Other related topics