"Find and replace" for spaces after colons in titles & obsolete state abbreviations in Chicago Style

Patrick Milas
When I create bibliography or create a citation using Chicago style, my references end up with an extra space after colons in titles. I can edit the individual references, but there are so many. Is there a way to do a "find and replace" across all references?

I noticed also that for some citations there are obsolete state abbreviations. For example, when I click "create bibliography" it reads "Mich:" rather than "MI" for Michigan. Is there a way to do a "find and replace" across all references? Or turn on two-letters state abbreviations? Wishful thinking?

In case it's relevant, I recently started using Zotero and imported many references from EndNote.

Kind regards,
Patrick
  • adamsmith
    Unfortunately that's a no on both. Citation styles don't do any correction of data and unfortunately Zotero doesn't have search&replace abilitites (though that will happen, not sure when, though).

    You could go back to whatever you imported from Endnote and do this in a text editor, though -- not sure how much time you've already spent on organizing your Zotero library.
  • Gracile
    edited September 14, 2016
    I noticed also that for some citations there are obsolete state abbreviations.
    I don't know if it's still up-to-date, but the plugin "Abbreviations for Zotero" might help : http://citationstylist.org/abbreviations-for-zotero/
    (or https://juris-m.github.io/downloads/ for the Abbr. filter)
    Please correct me if I'm wrong adamsmith.
  • Patrick Milas
    Thank you for your insight, adamsmith and Gracile.

    adamsmith, please help me to understand. Could I at any time export a Zotero library to EndNote, perform a search and replace for all references using text editor, then import the revised library back to Zotero?

    Thanks,
    Patrick
  • adamsmith
    Could I at any time export a Zotero library to EndNote, perform a search and replace for all references using text editor, then import the revised library back to Zotero?
    not really, no -- it'll make a mess of syncing and break citations in existing documents (re-importing an item, Zotero treats it as a new item).
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