Double-space bibliography?

jeero

First, I apologize if this is too trivial a question, or already answered elsewhere. I am a complete zotero beginner.

I am currently adding a bibliography in APA style into a word document. The default seems to be to single space the whole bibliography. I need each of the citations to be single spaced, but I need to add a line (double-space) between each citation.

Is there an easy way to adjust this?

Thanks so much for your help!

Tjowens

You can adjust it just as you would if it was text in Word. Just set the paragraph spacing for before or after the paragraphs through Words formatting features.

jbrutland

When I adjust the line spacing in Word, it returns to single-spacing when zotero is refreshed.

Is there a way to edit the CSL file? I found an "entry-spacing" item in the "layout" macro for the bibliography, but adjusting the values has had no perceptible effect (especially as I don't know what the value represents).

sean

The APA style has just been updated in the repository by erazlogo, but in the future (as in, for other styles you might want to edit) you just need to use "line-spacing" like:

<option name="line-spacing" value="2"/>

bdarcus

@sean: I don't really agree with advocating users modify local copies of styles just to fix line-spacing issues, when this could more properly be handled with proper style integration in the word-processor. This might just be a question of documenting it; not sure.

noksagt

I still think that the Zotero bibliography should use a style other than "default" (it could certainly start out as a style copied from default, but it shouldn't change back to default whenever you refresh the bibliography).

You don't need to modify the style to fix line-spacing issues; you just modify the style used by the bibliography (currently, "Default"). Unfortunately, if you need a different style in the bibliography than in the rest of your text, you'll currently have to assign some other style to the rest of your text.

If a style guide calls for a particular line spacing to be used in a bibliography, as APA does, then I think it should be in the CSL file. It would even be nice if somehow a warning was given if the CSL line spacing differed from the line spacing used by the style of the Zotero bibliography.

bdarcus

@noksagt: +1.

The workaround I was thinking might work in the interim is what I think I've done (though don't recall): you tag a paragraph with a "bibliography" style, and then insert the bibliography there. IIRC, that will yield the expected behavior.

But I still think there's more to be done on the Zotero end, and it's not much work for significant gain.

What I do NOT want is for people to be forking these styles just to get around this (very minor) problem.

noksagt

In OO.o Writer (latest versions of everything), your workaround does not seem to work for me; the bibliography is always given the default style.

What I do NOT want is for people to be forking these styles just to get around this (very minor) problem.

Assuming that the changes they are making are document-centric (as most probably are) & not style-centric (as spacing in APA apparently is), then I agree. If a particular publisher or journal said they wanted "APA with a single-spaced bibliography," I'd see nothing wrong with a fork to support that (admittedly minor) change.

sean

I am not advocating that users use line-spacing to fork styles. But if the style specifically demands double-spacing, and it seems that APA does, the style should reflect that requirement, right?

bdarcus

Sure, sean. But style guides also tell you how to set body text spacing, and how to format headings. I think we'd all agree that doesn't go in CSL; rather, it should get configured in the document template and associated styles.

So am just saying two things:

First, this is a little messy because we're dealing here with the unclear interface between citation styling and document styling.

Second, part of the problem is that Zotero doesn't make it easy to do bridge this gap for the reason that Rick notes, and that it'd be nice to fix this, rather than for users to have to fork a style just to get the formatting they want.

nagchampa

As Jeero initially pointed out, with APA the format required is to have single line spacing for each reference, with a gap between.

I'm currently using the OpenOffice plugin version 2.0a2 which is formatting all my references as double spaced. While I can manually force them to be single spaced, with a margin below each paragraph, the plug-in should either do the correct formatting, or should use a custom style so that the formatting can be adjusted as needed.

tristanmartel

I'm using Mac Word 2011 v14.00 with Zotero Firefox plugin 3.0.7
I've edited the .csl (despite resistance from some of you) to have 1.15 line spacing in the bibliography. It shows up fine in the zotero preview pane, however when I "add bibliography" into my word document, it reverts to double spacing.

I realize I can change this after the fact by overriding the line spacing in word, but I'd rather make a custom APAspecial.csl that fits my institution's particular preference.

adamsmith

line-spacing and entry-spacing only take integers in CSL so there is no way to do this w/o modifying the "bibliography" style in Word. That this may look correctly in the preview pane is a fluke.

tristanmartel

Cool fluke.

Could you direct me to "modifying the "bibliography" style in Word? I realize this might be outside of Zotero's domain. This probably comes down to my Word skills.

adamsmith

http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/applyastyle.html

Candiceyang

It is 2020. And the spacing is still in default. Is there a way to change the bibliography spacing while it automatically refreshes it the way I want?

adamsmith

It is 2020.

and the point of that is...

There's really nothing to add to my last two posts. They do what you want.

Phoebe Cook

Just to streamline the advice already given (because I forget the solution and come back to this whenever I work on a new computer): Go to Format > Style, select "Bibliography," and click Modify. Then adjust the spacing between entries by changing the paragraph spacing.

Thanks @adamsmith!

izaca

ugh thank god. Or rather, thanks @adamsmith and thanks @"Phoebe Cook"

I could not get the CSL file to change correctly, but using the word instructions it was perfect. Way easier. Many many thanks.