MLA -- is there a way to get it right?

wildfieldbunny

I'm new to Zotero, and I am really disappointed to see that their MLA formatting is incorrect (using the Word plugin, at least). There seem to have been other posts about this, but no solutions posed. If there's a solution, could someone please point me toward it?

adamsmith

what in particular?

wildfieldbunny

MLA in-text citation is, basically, just author's last name and page number. E.g. (Smith 1). Zotero is including the year of publication and, when I added the page number, it added "p.". It's more like APA.

I don't mind editing each citation IF that leads to a lovely Works Cited page, but I saw other posts that indicated the MLA Works Cited page gets messed up -- that, even if you correct it, each time you refresh the bibliography, the original, incorrect formatting reappears.
Is there a way to create citation style guidelines that are "mine," since Zotero's MLA is wrong? Or, do I just have to adjust each entry -- and if so,is there a way to keep those changes?

adamsmith

if you see publication years in Zotero's MLA something isn't working right - are you sure you have MLA style selected? Have you tried in a new document? Zotero will include a title for MLA cites where needed for disambiguation, but never a date in the in text citation.

The works cited page is, to the best of my knowledge, as correct as it can be. Depending on what you cite it may require minor edits, but typical items - books, articles, chapters, movies, webpages - should come out right, including designation as print or online etc.

wildfieldbunny

Thanks! I'll take a look at some of those things - if there are no further posts means it all worked. :-)