Period in cite key of bibtex export

juh

Hi,

I am not sure whether this is the right forum to ask this question.

When I export a collection to bibtex Zotero autogenerates the cite keys. I have problems with one cite key in an editor. There is a period in the cite key as the title contains a period after the first word of the title.

This period breaks the highlighting feature of the editor (problem is reported to the developer of the feature.

But perhaps having a period in a cite key does not conform with Bibtex rules.

So is this a correct bibtex cite key?

name_title._year

Can I somewhere strip periods and other punctuations from the cite key generation of Zotero?

adamsmith

periods are legal, if perhaps unusual, in citekeys.

If you want to customize your citekey, you can either modify the javascript code in the Zotero bibtex translator (it's a file called bibtex.js in the translator folder in the Zotero data directory) or you can use an add-on like BetterBibtex, which allows for more customization
https://zotplus.github.io/better-bibtex/

zuphilip

But is there any reason to keep the period in the citekey? The rule for the citekey contains last name of the first author, first word of the title, and the year (concatenated with underscore). In my understanding of the rule, the period should not be part of citekey.

adamsmith

there's no reason to keep the period specifically, but there is a reason not to change the automated algorithm unless it actively breaks things or produces nonsense, since people are relying on it and it'd break existing documents.