New blog post about groff ms, refer, and APA; also reduced line-height in main.scss to 150%

Author: de-soot

_posts/2025-02-20-groff-apa.md

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 ---
 layout: post
 title: Guide to APA with groff ms and refer
-date: 2025-02-20
+date: 2025-02-06
 categories: groff, ms, refer, macro, tmac, APA, style guide, pdf
 permalink: /groff-apa
 ---
@@ -23,8 +23,8 @@ permalink: /groff-apa
   - [Default Fonts](/groff-apa#defaultfonts)
   - [Custom Fonts](/groff-apa#customfonts)
 - [Font Size](/groff-apa#fontsize)
-- [Font Style](/groff-apa#fontstyle)
 - [Line Spacing](/groff-apa#linespacing)
+- [Font Style](/groff-apa#fontstyle)
 
 [In-text Citation](/groff-apa#intextcitation)
 - [Parenthetical Citation](/groff-apa#parentheticalcitation)
@@ -43,17 +43,17 @@ permalink: /groff-apa
 
 # Preface <a name=preface></a>
 
-I think every student who has been through college has had to write an essay with citations and referencing for all their sources for a mandatory prerequisite class, and I was no exception to this.
+Many colleges give students a mandatory class where they learn how to cite and do referencing in essays.
 
-Just as a fun little challenge, I wanted to write my essay using [Neovim](https://neovim.io), the same terminal text-editor I code on and write blogs for my website with, so I had to find a word processor that can compile documents from plaintext (unlike What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) word processors, such as [LibreOffice](https://www.libreoffice.org) [Writer](https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/writer)). As you could tell from the title of this blog post, I chose to use [groff](https://www.gnu.org/software/groff) for that task.
+For my essay, I wrote it using [Neovim](https://neovim.io), the same terminal text-editor I code on and write blogs for my website with, and that would not have been possible without a word processor that can compile documents from plaintext (unlike What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) word processors, such as [LibreOffice](https://www.libreoffice.org) [Writer](https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/writer)). As you could tell from the title of this blog post, I used [groff](https://www.gnu.org/software/groff) to accomplish this.
 
-You do not have to be writing in APA to find this guide helpful, as it goes through where many of the things that you will need to change are and explains how to change them. Just adapt some of the specific changes made in this guide to suit your needs.
+Although some of the modifications detailed in this guide are specific to APA, you do not have to be writing in APA to find this guide helpful. Just adapt some of the specific changes made in this guide to suit your style guide.
 
 This blog guide mainly just serves to compile all the relevant research I had done into a simple step-by-step solution I can easily follow when I want to use groff to write essays in APA again, but it also hopes to help others who were in the same spot I was save themselves some time and frustration that I had to go through when figuring things out by myself for the first time.
 
 I made a [Github repository](https://github.com/de-soot/groff-apa) as a companion to this guide. It gives an example of the final generated output so you know exactly what you are going to get out of this. The source files included in the repository have some extra comments to help readability and can also be used as a template to quickly set things up to just get started writing.
 
-A fun little fact about this blog post: this is actually my second time writing this blog post because I lost the first one after almost finishing it.
+A fun fact about this blog post: this is actually my second time writing this whole thing because I frustratingly lost the first one in the dumbest way possible. I accidentally deleted the folder containing it because I forgot that I put it in the folder. Unfortunately, it was already gone by the time I realised due to the auto-emptying routine of my Trash folder scheduled to run once every hour.
 
 # Introduction <a name=introduction></a>
 
@@ -110,7 +110,7 @@ Many lecturers demand assignments to be submitted in double-spaced Times New Rom
 
 ## Font Family <a name=fontfamily></a>
 
-By default, groff already outputs text in your [device's default serif font family](https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/groff.html.node/Using-Fonts.html) (typically Times New Roman), but sometimes (very rarely, in my experience) lecturers prefer sans-serif or even monospace in some strange cases.
+By default, groff already outputs text in your [device's default serif font family](https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/groff.html.node/Using-Fonts.html) (typically Times New Roman), but sometimes (very rarely, in my experience) lecturers prefer sans-serif or even monospace in some cases.
 
 ### Default Fonts <a name=defaultfonts></a>
 
@@ -142,14 +142,22 @@ Installing custom fonts for groff is a little bit trickier; I have not been able
 
 ## Font Size <a name=fontsize></a>
 
-The default font size in groff is a little bit less than 12pt ([10pt](https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/groff.html.node/Manipulating-Type-Size-and-Vertical-Spacing.html), to be exact), but it is very easy to change. Simply add this line to your plaintext document:
+The default font size in groff is a little bit less than 12pt ([10pt](https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/groff.html.node/Manipulating-Type-Size-and-Vertical-Spacing.html), to be exact), but it is very easy to change. Simply add this line to your plaintext document to change the font size to 12pt:
 
 ```
 .nr PS 12
 ```
 
 As for what `PS` stands for, it probably means something like "Point Size"; `.nr` stands for "Number Registers".
 
+## Line Spacing <a name=linespacing></a>
+
+All parts of an APA-styled paper [should be double-spaced](https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format/line-spacing). By default, groff uses [120% of font size](https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/groff.html.node/Manipulating-Type-Size-and-Vertical-Spacing.html) as vertical spacing. Fortunately, changing this to double-spacing is just as simple as changing the font size: just set the vertical spacing (`.nr VS`) to double your font size (`.nr PS`).
+
+```
+.nr VS 24
+```
+
 ## Font Style <a name=fontstyle></a>
 
 Here is how to make your text **bold**,
@@ -176,17 +184,9 @@ And to set it back to normal:
 .ft R \" Stands for Regular or Roman
 ```
 
-## Line Spacing <a name=linespacing></a>
-
-All parts of an APA-styled paper [should be double-spaced](https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format/line-spacing). By default, groff uses [120% of font size](https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/groff.html.node/Manipulating-Type-Size-and-Vertical-Spacing.html) as vertical spacing. Fortunately, changing this to double-spacing is just as simple as changing the font size: just set the vertical spacing (`.nr VS`) to double your font size (`.nr PS`).
-
-```
-.nr VS 24
-```
-
 # In-text Citation <a name=intextcitation></a>
 
-It is finally about time to start getting into the actual citations after all that setting-up.
+Now that everything is set up, we can start to get into the citations.
 
 refer uses numbered footnotes by default, but APA wants the author(s) and date included in their in-text citations. This section will cover how to do exactly as APA says.
 
@@ -295,7 +295,7 @@ Documentation for what each of the `ref*spec!N` mean can be found in the comment
 
 The values for the letters after the `ref*spec!N` are specified in the bibliography file linked in the refer block (`ref.bib`).
 
-Rearranging `D` (Date) into the correct order (right after `A` (Author(s)) and before `T` (Title)):
+Rearranging `D` (date) into the correct order (right after `A` (author(s)) and before `T` (title)):
 
 ```
 .ds ref*spec!0  Q A D T S V N P I C O
@@ -307,7 +307,7 @@ Rearranging `D` (Date) into the correct order (right after `A` (Author(s)) and b
 
 ## Punctuation <a name=punctuation></a>
 
-Switching the order of the fields messes up the hard-coded punctuation order, but there are some other defaults that do not follow APA guidelines.
+Switching the order of the fields messes up the hard-coded punctuation order, but there are also some defaults that do not follow APA guidelines.
 
 Go to lines 59--73 of `refer-ms.tmac`, where you will find this:
 
@@ -383,16 +383,54 @@ This is how it looks like after some changes:
 
 The list below details the changes:
 
-- In the `.ds ref*spec!J` row, its `arg 1` is changed from a comma (`,`) to a period (`.`) to add a period after the Title field.
-- In the `.ds ref*spec!T` row, `\\*Q` and `\\*U` are removed to remove the opening and closing double quotation marks, respectively, around the Title field.
+- In the `.ds ref*spec!J` row, its `arg 1` is changed from a comma (`,`) to a period (`.`) to add a period after the title field.
+- In the `.ds ref*spec!T` row, `\\*Q` and `\\*U` are removed to remove the opening and closing double quotation marks, respectively, around the title field.
 - In both the `.ds ref*spec!T:0` and `.ds ref*spec!T:2` rows, `\fI` in `arg 3` and `\fP` in `arg 5` are removed to not italicise the text and because of redundancy (`\fP` resets font style back to normal), respectively.
-- In the `.ds ref*spec!V` row, its `arg 1` is changed from empty (`""`) to a comma (`,`) to add a comma after the Journal/Periodical field; its `arg 3` is changed from bold-ing (`\fI`) to italicising (`\fB`) the text.
-- All `\fP` in `arg 5` are moved to `arg 4` to make sure punctuations are not in bold or italics.
+- In the `.ds ref*spec!V` row, its `arg 1` is changed from empty (`""`) to a comma (`,`) to add a comma after the journal/periodical field; its `arg 3` is changed from bold-ing (`\fI`) to italicising (`\fB`) the text.
+- All `\fP` in `arg 5` are moved to `arg 4` to make sure the punctuations after each field are not in bold or italics.
 
 ### Authors, Ands & Ampersands <a name=authorsandsampersands></a>
 
+By default, refer prepends "and" before the last author for more than 1 author. This is in contrast to the ampersand (&) that APA wants.
+
+It should have been an easy fix to simply replace an "and" in one of the refer tmac files, but there is surprisingly no such thing to be found in any of the 2 files.
+
+A solution to this is to simply manually type out the whole Authors field in the bibliography file:
+
+```
+%K key123
+%A Author, A., Author, B. & Author, C.
+%D 2025
+%T Title
+%J Journal
+%V 123
+%N 456
+%P 999
+%O https://doi.org/12.34
+```
+
+As opposed to how it would usually be:
+
+```
+%K key123
+%A Author, A., Author, B. & Author, C.
+%D 2025
+%T Title
+%J Journal
+%V 123
+%N 456
+%P 999
+%O https://doi.org/12.34
+```
+
+However, this solution conflicts with the format of in-text citations, as described in the subsection below.
+
 #### Effect on Citations <a name=effectoncitations></a>
 
+Due to having only one `%A` in the bibliography file, refer will think that there is only one author and the formatting for citations specified in the refer block will not work.
+
+There is a solution for this. It is not pretty, but it works. Similarly to what you would do in the solution described in the Narrative Citations section, you would have to have 2 separate bibliography files: one that generates the correct citations (normal file with multiple `%A` for multiple authors) and one that generates the correct author field in the reference entry (modified file with only one `%A` for multiple authors). After compiling both versions of the document by changing the argument of `bibliography` in the refer block to switch between both of the bibliography files, use a PDF-editing tool to extract and combine the correct citations and references into one final file.
+
 ### Period Suppression <a name=periodsuppression></a>
 
 By default, refer appends a period at the end of each entry. This means that a period is added after the last field that contains a DOI or URL, which APA has [explicitly stated to not do](https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/reference-guide.pdf).

_site/assets/main.css

@@ -203,7 +203,7 @@ h2 { color: #1a1a1a; font-family: sans-serif; }
 
 h3 { color: #262626; font-family: sans-serif; }
 
-p, ol, ul { font-family: serif; color: #333333; hyphens: auto; text-align: justify; line-height: 1.75; }
+p, ol, ul { color: #333333; font-family: serif; hyphens: auto; text-align: justify; line-height: 150%; }
 
 @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) { body { background-color: #262626; }
   h1 { color: #f2f2f2; }