Capitalization in Chicago 15

awenner

Is there a reason why the Chicago CSL doesn't properly format titles? According to the Big Book:

16.17 Capitalization
In notes and bibliographies, titles of books, articles, and journal names are usually capitalized headline style (see 8.167). In reference lists, only journal names are headline style; titles and subtitles of books and articles are usually sentence style (see 8.166). The first word of the subtitle is always capitalized.

Yet all three of the Chicago formats insist on using first-word case only. I've done my best to try and roll my own version of the Chicago CSLs, but I'm not that strong a coder. This seems like a bizarre overlook.

erazlogo

Chicago styles do not force headline style for titles because foreign titles should not be capitalized and unfortunately there is no setup in Zotero & CSL to make capitalization dependent on the language of the title.

10.3 Capitalization of foreign titles

For foreign titles of works, whether these appear in text, notes, or bibliographies, Chicago recommends a simple rule: capitalize only the words that would be capitalized in normal prose—first word of title and subtitle and all proper nouns. In other words, use sentence style (see 8.166). This rule applies equally to transliterated titles.

You can capitalize titles manually in Zotero--just control-click on the title in the right column. In addition, there is a hidden preference in Zotero extensions.zotero.capitalizeTitles which is set to True by default.

dstillman

You can capitalize titles manually in Zotero--just control-click on the title in the right column.

(...or right-click on Windows.)

awenner

Interesting. I'd still like to know about the logic of the choice. While this might be a problem for people using foreign language titles, my inclination would have been to go with title case given that the initial majority of Zotero users are English speakers. Or perhaps not. Given the CSL limitations, someone's always going to be disappointed, correct?

Is it worthwhile to fork the Chicago CSL into one that headline-styles titles? I'd be happy to post a variant on the styles repository, but I'll hold off if the CSL editor in 1.5 has the capability to let you choose your titling rule.

erazlogo

While this might be a problem for people using foreign language titles, my inclination would have been to go with title case given that the initial majority of Zotero users are English speakers. Or perhaps not.

From these forums, the user base seems fairly international. Also Zotero is produced by the Center for History and New Media and most historians work with foreign language sources.

We had titles capitalized initially but turned the capitalization off because of user requests:

http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/1017/capitalization/

Is it worthwhile to fork the Chicago CSL into one that headline-styles titles?

You can create and install such a style yourself--see instructions here--just add this to titles:
text-case="title"

awenner

That's a great resource! I was able to fool around with the CSL and create my own variant that uses headline case for titles. Being able to edit CSLs in real-time, even like this, probably deserves mention in a future version of the FAQ.

I'm having a slightly harder time trying to stop Zotero from including the series title for books in the notes and bibliography. I know I should be changing something under the "containers" macros, but I'm not sure exactly what.

Any help would be appreciated.

erazlogo

Try taking out these lines:

<text macro="collection-title" prefix=", "/>
and

<text macro="collection-title" prefix=". "/>