Formatting of bibliography breaks when it starts with a doctoral dissertation

stefaniemeliss1

Hi Zotero Forum,

I have experienced some issues with my bibliography (Report ID 127562893).

Here is a minimally reproducible example.

0. open Zotero (7.0.5 (64-bit)), open Word (Microsoft® Word for Microsoft 365 MSO (Version 2402 Build 16.0.17328.20550) 64-bit )
1. add/edit citation - journal article by Baddely (2000) # Word citation style set to APA (7th)
2. add/edit biography # all looks fine
3. add/edit citation - doctoral thesis by Hemler (2020) # bibliography updates, all looks fine (see photo)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u10762064/14qu13aw9m57vk2v6p81.png
4. add/edit citation - doctoral thesis by Abaci (2014) # bibliography updates, nothing is written in italics anymore (see photo)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u10762064/avt98766ppwnf544rgyq.png
5. establish that the Abaci (2014) reference is not compromised - change last name of Abaci to Test
6. refresh Word plugin # bibliography updates, everything looks normal again (see photo)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u10762064/o62rgshfg0ff7ofk6qkg.png

Any thoughts here would be highly appreciated!
Thanks in advance

poettli

Probably https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/italics_in_word_bibliographies

stefaniemeliss1

Thank you, poettli.

Can I please check my understanding of the issue with you?

The formatting error occurs because Abaci (2014) contains a fairly large amount of italicized text which then causes the known issue with Word explained in the knowledge base. If I reduce the length of the dissertation title from "Direct and indirect effects of feedback, feedback orientation, and goal orientations on students' academic performance in online learning" to "Direct and indirect effects of feedback", everything works as expected. However, I will have to manually change this reference after finalizing the document and converting Zotero citations to plain text.

Is this correct?

Thanks again!

bwiernik

That understanding is correct. A simpler manual fix is to create a dummy reference that will sort first (for example, a paper with the author “Aaa, Aaa”) throat has a short title (so little italic text). That will prevent this Word bug from happening, and you can delete the dummy citation and reference when you’re doing final formatting. With this approach, you don’t have to modify the date for the thesis reference at all.

stefaniemeliss1

Thanks, bwiernik.

If I understand it correctly, your suggested fix would involve unlinking the citations before being able to to delete it. Is that correct?

If I instead duplicate the problematic reference, shorten its title, and insert that, I can manually edit the reference in the bibliography without having to unlink the citations. That way, all other references can still be updated to reflect changes in the bibliography.

damnation

In theory you can also click on the "Add/edit bibligoraphy" button and remove the extra entry. I'm not sure if that also removes this workaround's function though. You can try.

stefaniemeliss1

Thanks, damnation!

Yes, it's possible to remove the dummy entry in the bibliography manually without removing the function of the workaround. It's still possible to refresh the Zotero plugin and add other citations.

The only caveat here is that once the in-text reference of the dummy reference is removed, the Zotero plug in can not be refreshed anymore without losing the function of the workaround.

Thanks again, this was very helpful!

bwiernik

Very hacky solution—you delete all of the in-text reference apart from the space between author and year and then tell Zotero to keep the manual edits when you Refresh.