For lexicons, I continue to cite them according to the “bad” SBL way for citing dictionaries (the ABD example above).

Excellent and timely post!
I definitely agree with your suggestions and have, in fact, utilized something very similar in recent papers handed in (i.e., simply putting in the ‘edition’ field of my software, Accordance Bible Software).

For lexicons do you use the standard - Lexicon, s.v. “entry.” - or some derivation thereof? I’ve found this useful with our electronic editions, although I do suppose in the bib. I could cite the edition as well.

Mike,
Accordance does ‘tag’ page numbers so to speak. In every tool that has a page number it is put in a separate field so that it is indexed separately and can be searched for on its own, or in combination with multiple other fields.

It is very frustrating when publishers don’t give us e-texts with page numbers, but short of manually adding them in there isn’t a whole lot we can do.

You are right though, there are sometimes books with long chapters— this does need to be thought through a bit more.

Mike,
Accordance and Bibleworks do use page numbers whenever possible, but it could be improved.

But I do think its unfortunate that Accordance and Bibleworks generally don’t have page numbers tagged.

I also find it interesting that Evans prefers you to use physical books when he is one of the people who is responsible for digital editions…

I was being sarcastic about the city remark. Although, one can argue that a publication is more credible if it comes out of London or New York rather than Downers Grove, IL (again joking).

I was looking at your Vanhoozer footnote when I wrote my comments. I don’t own the book, and so I thought you were citing the chapter rather than a subsection within the chapter (Section: Ch.4; Undoing Biblical Theology.). It wasn’t until I looked at the table of contents that I understood “Undoing Biblical Theology” was a subsection within chap 4, and not the title of chap 4 (and as you know, chapter 4 is 50 pages). I do agree with you that this will narrow the section down to say four or five (?) pages, but not all books have subsections within the chapters, and some books have long chapters! That said, I’m not taking issue with a citation of digital sources, but instances where it cannot be easily narrowed down to a few pages might be better cited from the print counterpart.

While I think it’s definitely beneficial to develop ways of making electronic citations more accurate, I also think that users of digital books should put pressure on Bible software companies to include things like page numbers for citation reasons. I don’t use Accordance or Logos myself, so I don’t know how big of a problem this really is. Maybe most of them do this already.

You might also be interested in looking the Chicago Manual of Style, for information about citing electronic publications. The SBL Handbook of Style suggests that readers also consult CMS. The 15th ed of CMS, is dated 2003 (four years younger than SBLHS) and deals with electronic editions of works in §§17.4-15, 142-147. They suggest adding book numbers (if relevant) and chapter numbers, although it still doesn’t offer a very nuanced explanation, especially for CD/DVD-ROMs and ebooks. I expect the next edition to discuss the matter much more in-depth.

PS, I hate for you to disagree with me too!

Brandon,
I hate to disagree with you, but I disagree with you— I can’t help but think you didn’t thoroughly read my post I expressly said, if the electronic edition has the page numbers (i.e. the page numbers corresponding to the print edition, which most electronic editions do include) then that should be noted. In the case where the electronic edition doesn’t have the page number, a clear ‘heading’ should be noted, precisely in order for print edition users can find the citation if need be. I think this covers your concern.
Also, how does adding the city make it more of an intellectual enterprise? I’m very confused by that!

NB., the city is required in the citation information because it makes the citation itself more of an intellectual enterprise. It gets worse when publishers change locations, like Fortress from Philadelphia to Minneapolis, or when publishers have multiple cities, such as Routledge or Oxford press.

Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Accordance Electronic ed.; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 10.

Is there a type of electronic addition I’m not thinking of?

How do you think those should be cited?