Question marks in bibliography entries

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Some publications have a title which ends in a question mark (a.k.a. interrogation mark or interrogation point). This becomes a problem when typesetting a bibliography, since a full stop is added after the title, resulting in something like:

Livermore, R., Hillenbrand, C.-D., Meredith, M. and Eagles, G. (2007). Drake Passage and Cenozoic climate: An open and shut case?. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 8(1), Q01005.

Note the ugly ‘?.’ conjunction at the end of the title.

A solution was suggested on the texhax mailing list; at least one of the suggested hacks appears to work with ConTeXt. It requires the modification of the bibliography entries, and the definition of a new command. Below is a working example.

The BibTeX file, test.bib:

@article{art1,
  title = {{Is this a question?\killstop}},
  author = {Author, A.},
  pages = {1--2},
  journal = {Journa
[[Category:Fonts]]l of Something},
  volume = {1},
  number = {2},
  year = {2000}
}

The document itself, test.tex:

% bibtex hack starts here
\def\gobblestop#1#2{#1}
\def\killstop{%
  \aftergroup\gobblestop
  }
% bibtex hack stops here

\setupbibtex[database={test},sort=author]
\setuppublications[sorttype=bbl,refcommand=authoryear]
\starttext
\cite[art1]
\placepublications[criterium=text]
\stoptext

Notes:

  • I successfully tested this example with ConTeXt MkIV version 2011.10.01 (and I with MkIV 2019.07.04 beta).
  • Define the \killstop command before \starttext. The environment file is a good place for it, if you are using one.
  • Note the modifications necessary to the BibTeX entry itself: an extra pair of braces, and insertion of \killstop at the end.