Having constructed a general model citation, I can now turn to creating a specific one for a particular word in the 1933 re-issue of the first edition of the OED.
During the process of putting some of the bibliographic research for the re-issue onto the OED Wikipage the presence of existing citation templates was brought to my attention by Martin of Sheffield. The first port of call then, is to review what is currently available. There are four citation templates (see note) related to the OED listed on Category:Dictionary source templates (Cite OED, Cite OED1, Cite OED2, Cite OED 1933) and, of these, Cite OED1 and Cite OED 1933 are for references to the first edition of the OED and therefore of interest.
The outputs of the Cite OED1 and Cite OED 1933 templates are,
"{{{1}}}". Oxford English Dictionary (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. 1933.
and,
{{{1}}}. Oxford English Dictionary (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. 1933.
respectively, which (I am sure you have noticed dear eagle-eyed reader) are nearly identical.
Let's make an assumption that Cite OED1 is meant to refer to the 1888-1933 issue (comprising the individual volume releases beginning in 1888, the 1928 ten volume issue and the 1933 supplement), in which case both the title and publisher are incorrect, and, if Cite OED 1933 refers to the re-issue, then the title is incomplete and the publisher is also incorrect.
The OED 1933 template is used on precisely three pages at the moment and the OED1 template on thirteen. So any alterations will have little impact.
What should a specific citation look like? In general, for any publication the citation information should be enough to specifically identify the source of the reference. So for any book a combination of some or all of, the title, date of publication, author, publisher and ISBN, should uniquely identify it. If the reference is to a certain volume, chapter or page of the book, then volume and volume title, chapter and chapter title and individual page number may be required to specifically identify a reference source.
At both of these stages the first edition of the OED presents problems. For the first set of criteria, it was issued under two different titles with no authors and over a period of 45 years (1888-1933). For the second set of criteria; the volume number and letters covered by the individual volumes differ between the two issues; the OED doesn't have chapters per se, although the content is broken up into sections covering different letter ranges (eg Vol XI of the 1933 re-issue has three sections; T-Th, Ti-Tz and U); and some volumes use the same page number multiple times (eg Vol XII of the 1933 re-issue has four page number ones). Given this it would seem difficult to have a single 'classical' citation that could cover both issues.
A brief citation for the 1933 re-issue could be,
Murray, James A. H.; Bradley, Henry; Craigie, W. A.; Onions, C. T., eds. (1933). "Ti-Tz: Tonneau". The Oxford English Dictionary. 11 (1st ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 134.
Which uses the volume, section and page to give a location for the definition of the word tonneau.
However, unlike most other books, the OED contains a second indexing system other than page numbering; that of an alphabetical listing. In the majority of cases the word referenced and dictionary title of the re-issue would be sufficient as the content of the two dictionaries is the same. Only in the case of a word located in the 1933 Supplement to the dictionary would there be some uncertainty as to where the reference location would be.
So an example brief citation would now be,
"Tonneau". Murray, James A. H.; Bradley, Henry; Craigie, W. A.; Onions, C. T., eds. (1933). The Oxford English Dictionary. (1st ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
and for a word in the Supplement
"Tonneau". Murray, James A. H.; Bradley, Henry; Craigie, W. A.; Onions, C. T., eds. (1933). The Oxford English Dictionary Suppl. (1st ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
An even briefer version is,
"Tonneau". The Oxford English Dictionary. (1st ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. (1933).
which is the current citation style.
It would also be nice to include the OED excerpt, as it is out of copyright in the UK, but not completely in the US (only to Th: Vol IX(2)) due to different copyright laws,
"Tonneau". The Oxford English Dictionary. (1st ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. (1933). "Tonneau [F. tonneau, spec. application of tonneau cask, tun: see TONNEL.] Name for the rounded rear body of a motor-car (orig. with the door at the back). Also attrib. Hence Tonneaued a., having a tonneau."
A decision to be made then. Drop my version of the specific citation onto Wikipedia and move on or engage with the current templates?
What are templates anyway? According to Wikipedia,
'A template is a Wikipedia page created to be included in other pages. Templates usually contain repetitive material that might need to show up on any number of articles or pages.'
So they are effectively a shorthand notation (or subroutine in coding terms) that reduces the overall size of Wikipedia and increases its ease of use. Templates range from simple to complex all the way down to use of a programming language (Lua) to achieve the desired results. Given this, wandering into template construction could be the equivalent of blithely walking into a quagmire. But on the other hand it might be interesting to learn a bit more about them.
Note. Well there are now, once I'd worked out why Cite OED1 was missing from the list. The correction was completed without any understanding of what I was doing. It was just a matter of comparing the mark-up on the different pages and adding the missing " |" to the Cite OED1 documentation page.
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