Turning off automatic capitalization / capitalization in foreign languages

bevweber

In the last few months ( I unfortunately cannot specifically identify when this started - perhaps upon installation of Firefox 4?), Zotero began to capitalize every word in a foreign language in my bibliography.

I have turned off automatic capitalization using the instructions here: http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/automatic_capitalization , but unfortunately the problem persists.

As far as I can tell, no inappropriate capitalization of English; however, I tend to correct capitalization for MLA immediately on entry, since I usually have automatic capitalization turned off.

adamsmith

yeah, we're aware of that - we'll have to figure out what to do with MLA: The problem is that for English style requirements vary between title and sentence case - MLA forces title case, but that doesn't work well for foreign languages.
As a short term solution you can create a modified copy of MLA by first reading this:
http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
and then deleting all instances of text-case="title" from the MLA style (and following the instructions of getting it back into Zotero as a different style.).

bevweber

Thanks Adam .

So the shift to suddenly capitalizing all words in foreign languages - even if automatic cap is turned off - can't be undone in some way other than editing the MLA style?

Rintze

If the items in your Zotero library are properly capitalized, but you see incorrect capitalization in generated bibliographies, this would be a citation style issue, and we would need to know which style you're using.

If the items in your library are not properly capitalized, this is likely to be an issue with how you get your items into your library. From where do you get these items in foreign languages? Zotero uses web translators to allow you to save items from websites via the icon in the Firefox address bar, and knowing which site you use will tell us whether this is a problem with the website or Zotero's web translator.

bevweber

Items in the library are properly capitalized, but I see incorrect capitalization in generated bibs - for foreign langs only. I'm using MLA style, and have automatic capitalization turned off.

and this is a new problem, oddly.

adamsmith

No, it can't be undone in any other way but editing the style - but that takes you 5 minutes max. Automatic capitalization has nothing to do with output, only with the way Zotero imports your data.

@Rintze: MLA forces title case according to its style guide - problem is that title casing doesn't work for non-English titles at this time and we can't tell the difference, either. This has come up before. I'm not sure how to deal with this - I guess it would be possible to take out title-case.

bevweber

Thanks folks, that worked. I was hoping I would be able to change the name on this style (which I did - as MLA Caps Modified, filename mlacapsmodified) and then reinstall the regular MLA too, the Modern Language Association style would only reinstall by "updating MLA Caps Modified".

Fixing that isn't really high priority, but I'm curious as to why Zotero seems to still read those as the same file, even with different titles and filenames.

Thanks again for the speedy help.

adamsmith

you need to change the <id> as specified in the instructions - then you can have both styles installed simultaneously.