Converting all records in a library to Title case

sdspieg

I looked for an answer on this forum but couldn't directly find it. We download quite a few records from various databases. That means they're not always in sentence case - which is what we like to use in our reports. Is there a way to do that - either IN Zotero itself (and then - preferably just for ONE (group) library) or through the styles we then use in the LibreOffice/Word/... document (if there is a way to make them do that conversion on the fly). Thanks!

bwiernik

This is done using the styles in the Word/LO plugins. The various Chicago styles do title Case, for example. Definitely don't change the items in your library to title case--always store them in sentence case. Zotero can go from sentence case to title case easily, but no software can reliably go from title to sentence case (because of issues like proper nouns).

What specific style are you wanting to use?

sdspieg

Chicago - full note. But so that means that it will automatically convert items with Title Case or ALL CAPS to Sentence Case?

bwiernik

To do that, right click on the title in the right pane of Zotero and choose "Change Case" --> "Sentence Case". Change any necessary proper nouns back to uppercase.

Then, you need to choose a style in Word/LO that uses sentence case. Chicago Full Note uses title case. You can modify the style to use sentence case instead.

To do that, download the style from here:
https://www.zotero.org/styles/chicago-fullnote-bibliography

Open the .csl file in a text editor like Notepad or TextEdit. Change the style id at the top of the file to something different. Then find and delete all instances of:
case="title"

(There should be ten instances). General instructions for editing styles here:
https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step

Save that style and install it in Zotero.

If you don't want to modify a style and are flexible on other aspects like formatting, other styles like American Pschological Association use sentence case by default.

sdspieg

Thanks. And I AM sorry. I mistyped. I did mean Title case... We want out footnotes AND bibliography to be in Title Case. So in that case (no pun intended), we should be ok with just selecting Chicago in the LibreOffice Zotero-plugin? And it will take any items with ALL CAPS or Sentence case and convert those nicely into Title Case?

bwiernik

You should use Chicago full note. It will change any items in Sentence Case to title case. However, it won't fix ALL CAPS. You should fix those in Zotero (using the method I described above).

sdspieg

Got it. Thanks much!

adamsmith

Since you're also using non-English sources, see https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/preventing_title_casing_for_non-english_titles for how to prevent incorrect title casing of those.

sdspieg

Great! Thanks Sebastian. But in this case (and unfortunately) - they're only in English... Still - good to know.