Alphabetizing issue when creating biibliographies

bencail

Hi There,
I have just recently started using Zotero and am having an issue where instead of my bibliography alphabetizing by author last name, it is alphabetizing by author first name. I have tried all suggestions I have seen here on the forums for issues like this, and none have seemed to work. I am currently running Zotero on a macbook pro running on Monterey 12.4, and the issue occurs in any bibliography format that requires alphabetization. Really, I only need it to work well with Chicago author-date and Séminaire Saint-Sulpice -- Ecole Théologie (Français). Any help would be greatly appreciated!

adamsmith

This sounds like you may have you authors entered incorrectly in Zotero?

Could you paste a bibliography entry for Chicago author-date here?

bencail

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1968).

adamsmith

That's a footnote in Chicago full note, not a bibliography entry for Chicago author date?

bencail

Martin Heidegger. 1968. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row.

adamsmith

Yeah, you have the author as Martin Heidegger in a single field rather than Heidegger, Martin in two fields in Zotero. Click on the two small white rectangles next to the name to switch -- the way you currently have this, Zotero treats the name like an institutional name (you'd, e.g., enter "United Nations" this way).

bencail

Thanks, yeah that works better. The issue is that if I have an entry formatted that way then when I create a bibliography with Séminaire Saint-Sulpice -- Ecole Théologie (Français), the bibliography entry would also read as 'last name, first name,' and for that style it is supposed to just be rendered as 'first name last name'

adamsmith

That's an error in the style then, but also seems very odd, so are you sure about that? -- bibliography entries virtually never start with first names because it makes it incredibly hard to find items alphabetically.

bencail

It appears like this: HEIDEGGER Martin, Being and Time, trad. MACQUARRIE John, , trad. ROBINSON Edward, Harper & Row, New York, 1968.

bencail

Yes, what is concerning to me is that when I initially had the author names entered, I was at a brief citation seminar, and while my citations were appearing out of last-name alphabetical order, I was the only person who had this issue.