Introduction

I'm formatting a stylesheet for select sourcetypes in Turabian 8th Ed. I also have no experience in any facet of programming: no HTML, no XML, no Java, etc. I'm learning (quickly!) as I go along. Please pardon my ignorance.

So far, I have formatted the bibliography formats for my five sourcetypes: Book, BookSection, JournalArticle, ConferenceProceedings, Report. To that end, everything shows up correctly in my bibliography. (Soon I will need to format the citations and footnotecitations...that will be a whole new challenge!)

I am using Microsoft Word 2010 on a Windows 7 PC.

Bibliography

There are two things I need to do yet with the bibliography:

Sort Order

First, sort order. I need a one-column bibliography with all entries alphabetized by author/editor/translator last name. When multiple entries have the (exact) same author(s), they then need to be sorted alphabetically by title. In principle, all this happens. The problem: the sorting does not dismiss the articles at the beginning of the titles. For example: "The Care" is listed after "Prolegomena", rather than after "Being". I have the <overrides> element listed as per the instructions in the BibWord_Guide document (with <articles>-A-THE-AN-</articles>).
Here is my bibliography code and the code for sorting author names; you'll see in the first that I give the parameter %Title:a%, yet this does not solve the problem.

Bibliography code

<bibliography><columns>1</columns><sourcetype="Placeholder"><columnid="1"><halign>left</halign><valign>top</valign><format>[[%Tag%]]</format></column><sortkey>{%Author:0|Editor:0|Translator:0|Corporate:0%%Title:a%}</sortkey></source><sourcetype="Book"><columnid="1"><halign>left</halign><valign>top</valign><format>{%Author:3|Editor:5|Translator:9%. }{&lt;i&gt;%Title|ShortTitle%&lt;/i&gt;.{ %Edition% ed.}}{ %Editor:7%.}{ %Translator:11%.}{ %City%{, %StateProvince%}{: %Publisher%{, %Year%}}}{ %Publisher%{, %Year%}}{ %Year%}.</format></column><sortkey>{%Author:0|Editor:0|Translator:0|Corporate:0%%Title:a%}</sortkey></source><sourcetype="BookSection"><columnid="1"><halign>left</halign><valign>top</valign><format>{%Author:3|Editor:5|Translator:9%. }{"%Title|ShortTitle%"{%Translator:13%}.}{ In &lt;i&gt;%BookTitle%&lt;/i&gt;}{, %ChapterNumber% series{, %Edition% ed.{%Editor:12%}}}{, %Edition% ed.{%Editor:12%}}{%Editor:12%}{. Vol. %Volume%{, &lt;i&gt;%Comments%&lt;/i&gt;}}{, %Pages::%.}{ %City%{, %StateProvince%}{: %Publisher%{, %Year%}}}{ %Publisher%{, %Year%}}{, %Year%}.</format></column><sortkey>{%Author:0|Editor:0|Translator:0|Corporate:0%%Title:a%}</sortkey></source><sourcetype="JournalArticle"><columnid="1"><halign>left</halign><valign>top</valign><format>{%Author:3%. }{"%Title|ShortTitle%". }{%Translator:11%. }{&lt;i&gt;%JournalName%&lt;/i&gt;}{ %Volume%}{, no. %Issue%}{ ({%Month%{ %Year%}}{%Year%})}{: %Pages::%}.</format></column><sortkey>{%Author:0|Editor:0|Translator:0|Corporate:0%%Title:a%}</sortkey></source><sourcetype="ConferenceProceedings"><columnid="1"><halign>left</halign><valign>top</valign><format>{%Author:3%. }{"%Title|ShortTitle%".}{ %ConferenceName%}{, %City%}{, %MonthAccessed%{ %DayAccessed%,}{ %YearAccessed%.}}{, %MonthAccessed%}{ %YearAccessed%.}{, %YearAccessed%.}</format></column><sortkey>{%Author:0|Editor:0|Translator:0|Corporate:0%%Title:a%}</sortkey></source><sourcetype="Report"><columnid="1"><halign>left</halign><valign>top</valign><format>{%Author:3%. }{"%Title|ShortTitle%".}{ %ThesisType%}{, %Institution%}{ (%City%)}{, %Year%}.</format></column><sortkey>{%Author:0|Editor:0|Translator:0|Corporate:0%%Title:a%}</sortkey></source></bibliography>

(As a side note, I'm not very sure I understand exactly how the nesting of conditionals works here...if someone who is more keen on this than I am could let me know either if there will be a potential problem with how the params are nested--so far, everything works, but I'm thinking in the future when I add more sources and maybe something doesn't have a volume or a city or...etc.--or if there is a simpler way to write the formatting tag, then I would be grateful.)

NameList sort code

<namelists><listname="sort"id="0"><single_prefix></single_prefix><multi_prefix></multi_prefix><corporate>{%Corporate%}</corporate><first_person>{%Last|First%}</first_person><other_persons>{%Last|First%}</other_persons><separator_between_if_two></separator_between_if_two><separator_between_if_more_than_two></separator_between_if_more_than_two><separator_before_last></separator_before_last><max_number_of_persons_to_display>500</max_number_of_persons_to_display><number_of_persons_to_display_if_more_than_max>500</number_of_persons_to_display_if_more_than_max><overflow></overflow><single_suffix></single_suffix><multi_suffix></multi_suffix></list><!-- There are more lists under this element in my code, but this is the only one used in the sorting --></namelists>

3-em Dash

Second question, and this one I have not even tried to figure out, because I don't even know where to start. When the primary author/editor/translator (whatever is listed first in the bibliography entry) is exactly the same, then in entries subsequent the first the name should be replaced with the 3-em dash. Note, in the case of editor or translator, ", ed(s)." and ", trans." should be preserved. So, for example, a list of entries such as:

Levinas, Emmanuel. Ethics and Infinity. Translated by Richard A. Cohen. ...
Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. ...
Marion, Jean-Luc. Being Given. Translated by Jeffrey Kosky. ...
Marion, Jean-Luc. In the Self's Place. Translated by Jeffrey Kosky. ...
Schaff, Philip, ed. Ante-Nicene Fathers. Vol. II. ...
Schaff, Philip and Henry Wace, eds. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Vol. VII. ...
Schaff, Philip and Henry Wace, eds. Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers. Vol. VIII. ...

should show up in the bibliography as:

Levinas, Emmanuel. Ethics and Infinity. Translated by Richard A. Cohen. ...
———. Totality and Infinity. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. ...
Marion, Jean-Luc. Being Given. Translated by Jeffrey Kosky. ...
———. In the Self's Place. Translated by Jeffrey Kosky. ...
Schaff, Philip, ed. Ante-Nicene Fathers. Vol. II.
Schaff, Philip and Henry Wace, eds. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Vol. VII. ...
———, eds. Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers. Vol. VIII. ...

Entry fields in Source Manager

My final question pertains to the available fields when editing the source in source manager. Some source types do not by default allow for certain inputs (even when "show all fields" is checked), which I would like (need) to have. For example:

JournalArticle does not have an input field for "Translator" (it has "Editor", though).
BookSection does not have an input field for Series Number or Volume Name. (Neither of these seem to be options for any type of source, so this would require adding an additional element. In the above code, I am using "ChapterNumber" and "Comments" respectively for these fields.)
ConferenceProceedings does not have an input field for Translator, StateProvince, CountryRegion, Month, or Day. (I am using MonthAccessed, DayAccessed, and YearAccessed in lieu of the latter.)
Report does not have an input field for StateProvince or CountryRegion.

I would also find it helpful to clean up the source manager a bit by removing from the drop-down list the sourcetypes I am not using (i.e. limit the options to the five aforementioned).

Conclusion

Phew! I know there are a lot of questions and details in this post. If you can respond even to only a part of the post, I'm very grateful. Thank you in advance for any advice or direction anyone can give me for any of these points, and thanks also for your patience with me as I am still learning even the very basics. I'm sure I'll be posting again in the near future as my adventures in programming run into more complicated messes.