author name order

jodi
Author name order MATTERS for sorting. But it shouldn't.

Do I really have to go manually through my library changing whether authors are listed as first last or last, first in order to fix this?
  • dstillman
    Don't know what you mean by this.
  • jodi
    Sorry, I mean that this will be the sort:

    Einstein, Albert
    Marie Curie
    Nelson Mandela

    When I would expect a sort by last name, regardless of whether names are in first last or last, first order:

    Marie Curie
    Einstein, Albert
    Nelson Mandela

    (I see now that this could sound like a complaint about sorting by first author--which is not what I mean).
    Does that make sense?
  • fbennett
    Use the little square-boxes icon to the right of the name to toggle it to "family name - given name" order, which is correct for people. In the "first last" ordering, a personal name will not be formatted correctly in citations -- use that for organization names only.
  • jodi
    I know *how* to change this -- I just don't think I should HAVE to do this by hand.

    It appears that what you're saying is that this *is* useful due to the need to support organizational names. Perhaps there's another way to do that?
  • fbennett
    Yes, there are lots of ways that institutional authors could be flagged. This is the way it's handled in the Zotero UI, and until someone comes up with another method that is far enough superior to justify retraining the entire community to use it, the current method will probably stay as it is.

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