"Document" and "Letter" Quotation Marks

bobanello

I noticed that, in the more recent versions of the Zotero CSL for Chicago Manual of Style 16th Edition (Full Note), in cases of Document and Letter item types the comma is appearing after the closing double quote following the title rather than before it. The latter is how Zotero CLS for this style operated in 2010. Is this an overt change in the style (in which I need guidance to make customization to the CSL) or is this a case of something needing modification to the basic style?

Thank you for any consideration you may give to this inquiry,
Fr. Bob Anello

adamsmith

that'd typically be something going wrong unless you're using the style with a non-US locale. For US English, commas outside of quotation marks shouldn't exist (not in general and not in CSL-generated citation styles).
Could you post an example citation and/or bib entry for those two?

bobanello

Thank you adamsmith,

Once you confirmed what the proper formatting should be, I went into each chapter subdocument file and the master document file, re-selected Chicago Manual of Style 16th Edition (Full Note) and performed a refresh. That cleared up the problem.

Again, thanks!
Bob Anello

bobanello

A reverse of the original problem seems to be occurring, again with Chicago Manual of Style 16th Edition (Full Note). I have an Item Type "Letter" with the Title:
Form letter, from the ‘Office of the [Quigley North] Rector’ (The Title ends in a single quote.)

What is appearing in the footnote is:
John P. O’Donnell, “Form letter, from the ‘Office of the [Quigley North] Rector,’” June 22, 1970, Box SCHL/S1000/2, “[Quigley North] 69-70” binder, ACBA; “Form letter, John P. O’Donnell to ‘Dear _______,’” July 14, 1970, Box SCHL/S1000/2, “[Quigley North] 69-70” binder, ACBA.

Note that in both Letter type instances in the footnote, the CSL appears to be placing the comma before the closing single quote rather than between the single quote and the double quote. Any suggestions?

Thank you,
Fr. Bob

fbennett

That is by intention (but the floor is always open for arguments to change things).

bobanello

Thanks for the clarification. I looked it up in my grammar book and you are correct. I yield to convention.

bobanello

Sorry to reopen this discussion but in reviewing my footnotes, I observed that, in at least the cases of Item Types Email and Newspaper Article with Chicago Manual of Style 16th Edition (Full Note), CSL is applying the convention singlequote-comma-doublequote.

Rick Casey, “Head of PADRES: ‘We’re Still 2nd Class in Church’,” National Catholic Reporter, May 13, 1977, 1.
Edward Flanagan, “Email, ‘St. Joseph’s Seraphic Seminary, Callicoon, N.Y.’,” May 19, 2010.

Fr. Bob

fbennett

It doesn't do that for me here, but maybe someone else can reproduce it?

adamsmith

Can't reproduce this either, not for letter, emails, nor newspaper articles.

@bobanello -- which Zotero version? How are you testing this (Word add-on, some other way)? Have you tried changing to a different citation style and back in your document?

bobanello

I repeated it from scratch to ensure that I was using pure Zotero.

I installed Zotero for Firefox 4.0.28.7 on Mozilla Firefox 42.

I installed Word for Windows Plugin 3.5.3. I use Microsoft® Word 2013 (15.0.4771.1000) MSO (15.0.4771.1001) 32-bit, Part of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2013.

I prepared the sample by opening a brand new MS Word file, selecting Chicago Manual of Style 16th Edition (Full Note), and entering the two samples from my database.

While I have a custom version of Chicago Manual of Style 16th Edition (Full Note), I did not select that version. I believe I am selecting the standard version offered by Zotero for Firefox 4.0.28.7 and Word for Windows Plugin 3.5.3. I can verify that if you could advise me where to look.

I can also send the docx file.

Rick Casey, “Head of PADRES: ‘We’re Still 2nd Class in Church’,” National Catholic Reporter, May 13, 1977, 1.
Edward Flanagan, “Email, ‘St. Joseph’s Seraphic Seminary, Callicoon, N.Y.’,” May 19, 2010.

adamsmith

Ah, I got it. It's the additional apostrophe that's causing this, likely throwing off the processor's quote handling.

@fbennett -- could you take another look? This works correctly with
Rick Casey, “Head of PADRES: ‘We are Still 2nd Class in Church,’” National Catholic Reporter, May 13, 1977, 1.

But incorrectly with

Rick Casey, “Head of PADRES: ‘We’re Still 2nd Class in Church’,” National Catholic Reporter, May 13, 1977, 1.

bobanello

That would be consistent with the additional apostrophe in the Email title.

bobanello

Hi @adamsmith, hi @fbennett,

Any update on resolving this formatting situation?

Thanks for all that you do!
Fr. Bob

fbennett

I get the error (comma between inner and out quotes) when the entry data for the title is this:
Head of PADRES: 'We're Still 2nd Class in Church'
I get correct output (comma moved inside both quotes) with this:
Head of PADRES: "We're Still 2nd Class in Church"
Is that what you are both seeing? If so, how important is it for the processor to interpret the semantics of ambiguous single straight quotes?

bobanello

The situation

Head of PADRES: 'We're Still 2nd Class in Church'

occurs in low-to-moderate frequency, when a periodical or newspaper article title has a quote in it. The original title is actually

Head of PADRES: "We're Still 2nd Class in Church"

but the double quotes must be changed to single quotes because they are inside the title, which Zotero surrounds with double quotes.

Hope that helps,
Fr. Bob

adamsmith

the key here is data entry, though: if the original title is
Head of PADRES: "We're Still 2nd Class in Church"
that's what you should put in Zotero and that gives you the correct citation (so Frank, the answer to your first question is yes).

The citation style will take care of converting the double quotes into single quotes if the title is enclosed in quotation marks (which isn't universally the case for articles: e.g. APA style doesn't do this).

Given this, the anwer to the "how important" question is, I would say, pretty low -- though not zero, since we'll likely see single quotes in imported articles (e.g. the NYTs uses them for quotes in headlines).

bobanello

Thanks, adamsmith and fbennett, for solving the situation.

One suggestion I would have is to make a slight change to the documentation "Adding Items to your Zotero Library" to advise manually entering the quotations as presented in the article's title. A good place for it would be with in the section on Titles following the discussion of 'Title Cased or Sentence cased' capitalization recommendations. Similar to the question of which case to enter, I thought I had to make those quotation adjustments myself.

Fr. Bob