Problems with et al

babrevian

Hi guys,
I hope someone can help. I edited an existing style for my own needs, and everything is working 100%, except for et al. My citation style (a form of Harvard) demands that et al should be italicized. I manage it quite ok, except that whenever et al is used in an in-line citation, the date and page number are also italicized, i.e. (I added <i>...</i> to show which part appears in italics in my documents)
(Waltke <i>et al., 2014:80)</i>

It should only be
(Waltke <i>et al.</i>, 2014:80)

Here is a snippet from my author-sort macro:

<macro name="author-short">
<names variable="author" font-style="normal">
<name form="short" font-style="normal" and="symbol" initialize-with=". "/>
<et-al font-style="italic"/>
<substitute>
<names variable="editor" font-style="normal"/>
<names variable="translator"/>
<choose>
<if type="report">
<text variable="publisher"/>
<text variable="title" form="short" font-style="italic"/>
</if>
<else-if type="legal_case">
<text variable="title" font-style="italic"/>
</else-if>
<else-if type="bill book graphic legislation motion_picture song" match="any">
<text variable="title" form="short" font-style="italic"/>
</else-if>
<else>
<text variable="title" form="short" quotes="true"/>
</else>
</choose>
</substitute>
</names>
</macro>

Is there a way to prevent the Italics of et-al bleeding into my date and page number text?

Thanks

zuphilip

I think the italics from the date and number are not coming from this code snippet. Can you upload your style completely to https://gist.github.com/ (no registration needed) and then write here the link?

babrevian

Thanks for helping. If I remove the snippet ( <et-al font-style="italic"/>) from the Macro: Author-Short. The italics disappear and becomes normal. That is why I suspect the problem is here. Perhaps you can see the problem. Here is the code

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/10af3dec2a20a6c2556b

zuphilip

I tried your code and I can see that only the "et al" is in italics, i.e. everything looks fine for me. Did you try the CSL test pane in Zotero? Are you using the Zotero Plugin in Word?

(Note, there are two small erros in your style, which you might want to correct...)

babrevian

Yes, it appears OK in the CSL test pane, but in Word 2010 (with Zotero Plugin for Word) it is as I described in my post. Could the problem be with Word and not the CSL code? Thanks for identifying the faults. Will attempt to correct them. Not sure how, exactly!
:-D

fbennett

This is a bug in the processor's RTF markup configuration. It was triggered by setting the font style to "normal" in several locations within the style, which is unusual, but certainly not wrong.

If you install this patch plugin, the problem should go away. You will want to disable or remove the plugin at the next Zotero release (after 4.0.27).

babrevian

Thanks. I will try this.

So if I remove the "unnecessary" font styles, the problem should resolve without the patch?

adamsmith

correct, if you just remove all font-style="normal" we'd expect this to go away.

babrevian

Thanks. It worked. I removed all the font-style="normal" tags and it is working 100%.

Any advice on how to remove the other two errors you picked up. I am not well versed in CSL syntax.
Thanks again for all your help.

adamsmith

1) "Theology" isn't valid for category-field
It has to be from this list:
http://docs.citationstyles.org/en/latest/specification.html#appendix-i-categories
(this won't actually break anything, but we wouldn't accept it to the repository & Zotero will tell you it's invalid when you install).

2) line 375 is missing variable="locator"

fbennett

(Placing the locator label in that position looks like an odd choice, though. You might need to adjust the code there, depending on what the style calls for.)

babrevian

Thanks guys,

I made the necessary changes and now my code pass the Validation.