Will Zotero automatically put periods on initials if the style requires it?

aaronchall

Will Zotero automatically put periods on initials if the style requires it? I've been leaving periods off my author's middle initials and first initials if that's all that's given.

My professors prefer full names, and I was going to change the APA style to reflect that.

Thoughts?

adamsmith

yes to the question in the subject.
initialize-with=" "
in the name section of the variable determines this. If it is left out entirely, full first names are given.
For your database it is always preferable to put in full names.
Look at some existing styles in the test panel
chrome://zotero/content/tools/csledit.xul
to get a feel.

aaronchall

So should I put periods after the initials in the database?

For example, if I have a middle initial, and not the full middle name, should I put a period after that initial in the database?

adamsmith

no - Zotero can add but not remove periods.

aaronchall

Sweet, I've been doing right then. Thanks.

Aaron

Seravall

Hi, Adam,
I've been trying to check what you said in the APS style that I've recently installed. However I check the test panel and I cannot find the string "initialize-with" in the APS style, whileI've found it in the APA style...
I am pretty sure authors initials are required with a period following:
http://authors.aps.org/STYLE/
any suggestion on how to do it?

BTW, I think the same problem applies to the the AIP style:
http://physics.gac.edu/~huber/misc/aiprefs.htm

many thanks...

adamsmith

hi - thanks for reporting this - I'll have a look later, but seems like you're right - to fix this you would have to insert
initialize-with="."
in the <name.... sections of the style
Leaving it out gives you full first names as in the current version of the APS and AIP style.

Seravall

Hi, Adam, thanks for the tip,
I've tried to edit AIP and APS styles and made them to work by adding Initialize-with="." in the line:
<name delimiter=", " initialize-with="." name-as-sort-order="all" and="text"/>...
I needed some tries with spaces and position within the line, but I've made it working at the end....great tool the test panel, BTW.

Probably it should be better to update the styles in the repository section of Zotero, though...
My compliments for the good work in making Zotero easy to customize: took me very little time to understand the problem and fix the style myself...

adamsmith

ah yes, thanks for the reminder - hope to get to this today.

adamsmith

OK - once again thanks for reporting - should be fixed now on the repository - for editors, too.

JonEP

I'm finding that many author names pulled from the internet using site translators (google books for instance) are importing periods after authors' middle initials. So that much of my database actually includes the periods...

Is this an issue that the Zotero team is aware of, and is it possible to avoid bringing in those periods? Or is it a question of each provider having its own protocol and therefore the offending periods must be stripped away by hand?

Thanks.

ajlyon

Period stripping has never been something I've attempted in writing site translators. As a general data hygiene issue, I suppose we can try to strip them in the future, as part of the growing and unwritten set of best practices.