APA alphabetical ordering in bibliography for multi-word surnames

jeffmutonho
Hi guys,

I'm using Zotero with MS Word. I'm busy with a thesis and am required to use the American Psychological Association(APA). I've got citations where the author's surname is something like Van Eeden or better still, Van Der Merwe. I noticed that the surname Van Eeden is listed in the "E" section of my bibliography and Van Der Merwe in the "M" section. Is there a way of getting around this?

(PS:Alphabetical bibliography ordering is working for everything else, except surnames with more than one word in them)
  • adamsmith
    that's coded in the style - are you sure it's not correct for APA? If so, could you provide the relevant section from the styleguide (ideally with a link, else a quote would be great since I don't have it here) and it can be changed globally.
  • bfmalle
    Here is a source:

    http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/05/alphabetization-in-apa-style.html

    The relevant rules:

    1. Alphabetize letter by letter.

    2. Ignore spaces, capitalization, hyphens, apostrophes, periods, and accent marks.

    So van der Broekele, J. is before Vandetta, B.
  • RintzeRintze
    They're both linked from the blog post above, but more information can be found at:

    http://blog.apastyle.org/files/alphabetization-in-apa-style-quiz-and-key.pdf (question 9)
    and
    http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/05/alphabetization-in-apa-style.html#comment-6a01157041f4e3970b0133f2f1a6b2970b

    So APA should probably use demote-non-dropping-particle="never". Ignoring spaces, hyphens and apostrophes seems a bit non-standard though.
  • adamsmith
    thank you. This issue is explicitly addressed by the APA person in the comments:

    "Great question! Basically, if you use the prefixes as part of the surname in the text, then you alphabetize by those prefixes since they are the first letters of the surname. If it's van den Berg in the text (never just "Berg"), then in the reference list you alphabetize under V."

    I have fixed this for the APA style. An updated version will show up in the repository shortly ( http://www.zotero.org/styles ), update your local copy by clicking the install link and then OK when prompted.
    To update your document you may have to switch to a different style and back.
  • bfmalle
    Thanks for the quick fix! Works perfectly.
  • jeffmutonho
    Thank you guys.
  • asruesch
    I'm having this same problem with the style configuration for Conservation Biology. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

    Aaron
  • adamsmith
    the same requests as for above apply - we need a published example, a note from an editor, or a section from a style guide and then it's a quick fix.
  • asruesch
    Apologies. Their style guide doesn't explicitly state a rule for this case. However, I was able to find an example. See the name "Ver Hoef" in the bibliography of the following paper:

    Fisher, R. N., A. V. Suarez, and T. J. Case. 2002. Spatial patterns in the abundance of the coastal horned lizard. Conservation Biology 16:205-215.

    Thanks for the quick response!
  • adamsmith
    ok, up. Should show up on the repsotiroy momentarily (watch for the updated timestamp). Once it shows up, update by re-installing.
    In your document you'll likely have to switch to a different citaiton style and back for the changes to take effect.
  • asruesch
    Perfect! It worked! Many thanks!!
  • adamsmith
    pleasure, thanks for reporting.
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