Author a z sort bug

[stumped]

So what should an author sort do with a name like Emily St. John Mandel ?
file under S, or J or M?
Failed to fool Wikipedia into telling me.....
Any librarians here ?

Good writer BTW.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by stumped

So what should an author sort do with a name like Emily St. John Mandel ?
file under S, or J or M?
Failed to fool Wikipedia into telling me.....
Any librarians here ?

Good writer BTW.

See http://emilystjohnmandel.tumblr.com/

[stumped]

Thanks would not have guessed at M.
Typing on tablet wondering how to check author sort without going to turn on pc and look in calibre. Lazily grabbed station eleven with cc from cloud instead. Grouping drawer has it under m, a z list has it below P so I am thinking S .
Thus an example of where my book level and the author dialogue tables are out of sync?. Will check on pc tomorrow. Bought this from amazon so may look at what they think the author sort is, hard to tell with kindle apps though.
How does the author dialogue table in calibre get populated anyway, how would that get to have mandel but the book get to have st john mandel, assuming no manual tweaks from me back at the add book stage.
I guess if I am really curious I should re download it via k for pc and then re add to calibre, and observe closely.

[stumped]

PS stubbornly looking for answers via my non amazon tablet and not getting out of bed and turning the pc on, and I don't have the kindle app on here either...
.but I got at my content and devices in amazon web site via browser, sorted my books my author , and they correctly have Emily as an M.
I can't think of any way to see my book level calibre author sort values from within cc, without actually going to look in calibre, so will do that tomorrow. Cc book details , metadata view, only confirm the author.

[BetterRed]

Some St Johns regard it as part of their surname, so for them I would have author-sort as 'St John Smyth, Ebenezer'. But the 'St' should never be separated from the 'John', as happens with Madeleine St John (Booker prize winner) - where author-sort ends up as 'John, Madeleine St', which looks like John, who lives on Madeleine Street.

If the St John pronounces it as 'sinjin' or 'sinjun' there may not a '.' after 'St'. The name was borrowed from Hebrew word meaning "God is gracious", but it got christianised into St John (the Baptist ??). IMO people who put a '.' after the 'St' should stop doing it

Why do we say words get 'borrowed' - far as I know they're never returned. Should be 'stolen' or 'pilfered'

BR

[stumped]

on the helpfuly provided link to her ask me anything

Emily St. John Mandel

St. John's my middle name. The books go under M.

she says St. John is her middle name ,and there was a full stop there.
Amazon listings also have a full stop. back on PC now so to check my theory:

hmm

in my book meta data :
station eleven author sort Mandel, Emily St. John,
but when I downloaded it to CC from dropbox last night, why was it grouped as M but sorted as an S ?


hmm
epub book opf has
<dc:creator opf:file-as="St. John Mandel, Emily" opf:role="aut">Emily St. John Mandel</dc:creator>
so at one time it was an S.

that was probably when I did the Kindle to Epub conversion

using edit on the AZW3 - what's that unknown doing there ?
<dc:title>Station Eleven</dc:title>
<dc:creator opf:role="aut" opf:file-as="Unknown">Emily St. John Mandel</dc:creator>

a possible explain of he apparent on going mis sort
lat nights download to CC was done from dropbox and last library mirror sync may have been before I did the QC plug in thing. & QC changed it
I will re-download from Calibre to CC later today & see how it is filed and grouped

[stumped]

update.
re-tested for Emily from up to date calibre -> CC. all good, she's now an "M"

[BetterRed]

we x posted - but FWIW

I would have gone into Manage Authors and typed, over the top of what's there, the value I wanted in that author-sort column, i.e "Mandel, Emily St. John". I have an idea that will set a flag in the database indicating author-sort has been defined by the user. That should prevent it being changed by software that implements fixed rules. That's what I had to do with Garcia Xxxxxx authors.

Also check Preferences->Tweaks->Author sort algorithm->Author name prefixes. Maybe 'St' has crept into that list, I recall someone having similar problems with abbreviated saints. Inevitably, they swore on a stack on books that they didn't put it there

BR

[chaley]

It seems like you are playing whack-a-mole with the metadata. If you haven't run out of moles, what I suggest you do is:

1. In calibre:
   1. Check if the same author exists with spelling variants. If this is true then the author will appear twice in the tag browser.
   2. Ensure that each author's sort value is correct.
   3. Select all books.
   4. Edit metadata in bulk. Check (only) the "Automatically set author sort" box. Press OK. This will ensure that all books in your library use the authors' sort value.
   5. If you want to see the author_sort value in calibre's booklist, create a custom column built from other columns (not like tags) and enter the template {author_sort}.
2. In CC:
   1. You can add the author_sort value to the book list if you wish. Go to CC's Settings / Customize the book list / Extra information in book list. Add Author sort to whichever cell you want.
   2. Make a wireless device connection to calibre. Let it sync.
3. In calibre:
   1. Go to the device tab.
   2. Ensure that all books that you think should match a book in the calibre library have an "In Library" check mark. This checks for orphaned books. Fix any that are not "In Library" using the Match book to library function in the right-click context menu. If you make any changes, be sure to "Send metadata to device".
   1. In CC:
   2. Disconnect as a wireless device.
   3. Connect as a wireless device. Let it sync.
   4. Disconnect.

At this point the metadata in CC and the metadata in calibre should be identical. If there are sorting anomalies in CC then they should also exist in calibre, and vice versa.

[stumped]

It is all sorted now thanks
as per my post #22