'von', 'van', 'de' in author's name appear as 'Von', 'Van', 'De'

Julian Koepff

Hi everybody,

I got a problem with the following citation:

Author: Decker, Frank
Author: von Blumenthal, Julia
Year: 2002

I would like them to appear as

(Decker/von Blumenthal 2002)

but the program changes the 'v' in the autor's name and it appears as

(Decker/Von Blumenthal 2002)

Eqally it does in the bibliography:

Decker, Frank/Von Blumenthal, Julia (2002): Title etc.

while it should appear as

Decker, Frank/von Blumenthal, Julia (2002): Title etc.

Curiously when I enter an editor with a name like that, it keeps the small letter in the name part 'von', 'van' or 'de'.

In my code I can't find any differences between how the author's name and how the editor's name is treated.

Is there a function to disable these changes?

Would be great if you could help me with this.

Greets, Julian

fbennett

Which style?

fbennett

Actually, I can confirm this. The capitalisation is being imposed implicitly by the processor when the particle is the first word in a sentence. For most words (like ibid) this is desired, but we might want an exception here. I'll wait for other opinions before making changes to the processor.

fbennett

Erm, from your example it's being a little more aggressive than I supposed. But I'll still wait for the dust to settle on discussion before making changes, just to be on the safe side.

Rintze

While "Von Blumenthal" is not a Dutch name, I'd like to point to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_name#Tussenvoegsels

"In the Netherlands, the tussenvoegsel is written with a capital letter if no name or initial precedes it."

So with the Dutch name "Julia van Bloemendaal", you would probably want to get "(Decker/Van Bloemendaal 2002)". I'm not a 100% sure what the Dutch custom is for inverted names like "Van Bloemendaal, Julia".

Julian Koepff

Thank you so far. I agree with Rintze, Dutch names require the capital letter. Although, I'd consider it more logical if it kept the names the way I put them in the Zotero fields so if someone want to have "Julia van Bloemendaal" written as "(Decker/Van Bloemendaal)", it has to be entered as "Van Bloemendaal, Julia" in Zotero.

@fbennett: This is a modified Harvard Style with special requirements from the Institute for Political Science of the Bremen University. Since there is no CSL-Style for this so far, I'm trying to modify the style "Harvard Institut für Praxisforschung (Bahr&Frackmann)" http://www.zotero.org/styles/harvard-institut-fur-praxisforschung-de but I already changed a bunch of things.

adamsmith

it has to be entered as "Van Bloemendaal, Julia" in Zotero.

that won't work, unfortunately: Many styles include names in their natural order, too: In fact, APSA's (since we're talking political science) style guide would cite the paper
Dekkert, Frank, and Julia van Bloemendaal. 2002....

Julian Koepff

D'oh!

fbennett

It sounds like we're close to correct with current behaviour. I've located the spots in the code where the letter is capitalised. It's conditioned on the word being a dropping or non-dropping particle and the first in a sentence. The "first in sentence" flag is apparently not touched until all names in a set have been rendered, which is where Decker/Von Bloemendaal comes from.

Are there any conditions under which capitalisation should be avoided for particles in first position? (We could tie it to language, but that would only be useful in MLZ, where we can set the language of individual names.)

Julian Koepff

So it considers a word after a slash as beginning of a new sentence?

I don't really get the dropping/non-dropping particle thing. If particles like 'von', 'van', 'de' etc. are put in front of the family name, they're handled as non-dropping particles, right? What does that mean?

If the family name as written in the family name field starts with a lowercase letter I want it to be kept this way. Only if the particle is really - being part of a in-text-citation - in first position in a sentence, means directly after a full stop, the first letter may be changed to a capital letter.

Regarding the bibliograpy, I'd like to have the 'von' in 'von Blumenthal' written always like it is written in the Zotero name field.

It should be listed under B (but as far as I see my Zotero does this automatically. Is this the function of non-dropping particles?).

fbennett

So it considers a word after a slash as beginning of a new sentence?

If the slash occurs within a set of names, that would follow from what I wrote above, yes. We have this from another colleague:

So with the Dutch name "Julia van Bloemendaal", you would probably want to get "(Decker/Van Bloemendaal 2002)".

All we're trying to do here is narrow down the conditions under which capitalisation is and is not correct.

Rintze

Dutch names typically use non-dropping particles. E.g. when the family name is printed in isolation "Bloemendaal", the particle is always added "Van Bloemendaal". This in contrast to a name like "Ludwig van Beethoven" (which is a bit of an odd case, since the name has a Flemish origin: http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question64860.html ), which just becomes "Beethoven". Here the "van" is thus a dropping particle.

The way particles are handled in CSL styles is described in more detail at http://citationstyles.org/downloads/specification.html#name

Julian, are you German? Would "Frau von Blumenthal" be correct, or should it be "Frau Von Blumenthal"? (in Dutch, it definitely would be "Mevrouw Van Bloemendaal")

adamsmith

Von Blumenthal"? (in Dutch, it definitely would be "Mevrouw Van Bloemendaal")

it's Frau von Blumenthal in German - but if "van" is capitalized in Dutch regardless of position I don't see the problem.
as per Julian above:

so if someone want to have "Julia van Bloemendaal" written as "(Decker/Van Bloemendaal)", it has to be entered as "Van Bloemendaal, Julia" in Zotero.

except that my concern, i.e. that this wouldn't allow for "Julia van Bloemendaal" doesn't apply any more.

Rintze

if "van" is capitalized in Dutch regardless of position I don't see the problem.

That's not the case. You would want "Julia van Bloemendaal".

adamsmith

grmpf.

DWL-SDCA

An additional problem is that metadata from many journals is not consistent. The same author may be supplied as: Hecke, Harriet Van; Hecke, H. van; Van Hecke, Harriet M.; van Hecke, H. M.-- even within the same journal title and within volumes having the same editor and managing editor. This even occurs within Elsevier and Springer journals where I would think that they should know how to get it right.

Any automation of this may be impossible. My group hand-edits these author names.

fbennett

Agree that touching up imports is unavoidable. On the output side we do well with dropping/non-dropping treatment and sorting. The capitalisation issue will be a small tweak to the processor, once we work out the parameters.

fbennett

If someone can compile a list of expected output forms, I'll look at improving the behaviour here.

fbennett

For a start, would it help to disable first-letter capitalisation after the first name is rendered? That would produce output like this:Van Bloemendaal, Julia; van Kraaft, Marcus

dunning

I noticed that these words are being incorrectly capitalized in titles as well; there seems to have been a discussion about this a few years ago that appears to indicate that 'van', 'von', 'de' are not capitalized, but they are anyway.

adamsmith

No, that thread just lists the rules in CMoS - I'm pretty sure they were always capitalized in Zotero.
That should be easier to solve, though:
@Frank - could we just leave d' de, von, and van alone in title casing?
For titles, the cases where van should be capitalized as per above would apply to sentence case as well, so we can expect it to be capitalized in the data and not worry about automatic capitalization.

dunning

Exactly. That would be fantastic.

fbennett

We're treading into fix-and-refix territory when applying heuristics to the field content. The processor recognises a tag for "don't change the case of this item", but it's an ugly verbose HTML span thing, and messes up sorts in the UI. Maybe eventually the title field can have tinyMCE, with a button for that markup and some magic to remove the tags for sorting ...

I'll take a look, though, for those four particles.

fbennett

I've set this up in the processor. It will a day or two before I release it; there is some other new code in the processor that I'd like to sit on for a little while before it goes out.

Rintze

This seems like an extremely hacky and unreliable solution though. E.g., what about cases like:

"Herman De Vries, les livres et les publications"
http://www.worldcat.org/title/herman-de-vries-les-livres-et-les-publications-catalogue-raisonne-exposition-du-8-avril-au-28-aout-2005-centre-des-livres-dartistes-saint-yrieix-la-perche/oclc/793112029&referer=brief_results
("De" is an uppercased particle)

"Hjerre Gjerrits van der Veen; libbensgong fan in skoalmaster."
http://www.worldcat.org/title/hjerre-gjerrits-van-der-veen-libbensgong-fan-in-skoalmaster/oclc/6277142&referer=brief_results
("van" and "der" are both particles)

Two alternative ways to solve the problem: a) introduce some type of escape to keep the title of individual items as is (these exceptions could then be stored in the library in title case, although that has its drawbacks as well) or b) introduce a title field-variant, just like Frank already uses in MLZ for title-translations/transliterations. Then the user could store the title both in sentence and in title case.

adamsmith

@Rintze:
I realize articles like "de," "von," and "van" can be uppercased and that is indeed a problem for handling name fields but I don't think it is a problem for titles.
Consider:
1. Both of your example wouldn't be affected by case="title" because they should have fr and nl in the language field which disable title casing.
2. Let's pretend the two titles were English. So we'd have
"Herman De Vries, books and publications"
and
"Hjerre Gjerrits van der Veen; lovesong(?) for a schoolmaster"

my point is that CSLs title case should leave alone van and De (and der apparently?)

So the title cased versions become:

"Herman De Vries, Books and Publications"
"Hjerre Gjerrits van der Veen; Lovesong(?) for a Schoolmaster"

Currently, the 2nd one becomes: "Hjerre Gjerrits Van Der Veen; Lovesong(?) for a Schoolmaster." Which at least according to CMoS title casing rules is wrong.

That corresponds to the current CSL behavior with things like "and" and "for" - title case doesn't force them into lowercase:

Input: "The master And margarita"
Returns "The Master And Margarita" in title case.

@fbennett - huh - if this has downsides on the processor side we can obviously rethink this - I figured you'd just have a list of exception words - the way Zotero's internal title casing function has.

Rintze

Ah, right. Dutch has many, many different particles, though.

fbennett

@adamsmith You're right of course, this was easy. When I remembered the stop-list for prepositions (d'oh!), I just added these, and it worked.

Including these common particles from the next release should be no problem. As Rintze says, comprehensive coverage would expand the list considerably, and we might start bumping into actual words.

A third solution might be to make the list configurable by the user. But we'll see how this goes.

dunning

Not sure if this is the right place to remark on this: but I've also noticed that "c." (i.e. circa) in titles is also capitalized. For instance, Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral, c. 1075–c. 1125 becomes Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral, C. 1075–c. 1125.

Edit: "et" would also be good to add to the list.

fbennett

I've added those to the skip list coded in the processor. You can test it by installing the processor patch plugin. (All it does is swap in the latest version of the citation processor. You can remove it after the next Zotero release.)

adamsmith

Frank - could you also have a look at the prepositions mentioned here: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/29077/bibliography-problems-chicago-manual-of-style/#Item_3