DWL-SDCA - Thanks for your comments, much appreciated. I don't want to get docked or have a bad attitude, but if I can't rectify this problem within Zotero, I either have to use Zotero the way it is or start over manually citing my paper and that is not a preferred option. I am not sure how to go about removing the Zotero field codes and editing the manuscript by hand.
There's an "Unlink Citations" button in Zotero that you can use -- you should do this as the last thing you do before handing in and you should do it in a copy of the document, so you have one copy of the document with linked citation in case you need to revise later.
(Also, as I've tried to make clear, this really has nothing to do with Zotero. You'd have the same issue creating the footnotes manually. Try it out.)
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(Also, as I've tried to make clear, this really has nothing to do with Zotero. You'd have the same issue creating the footnotes manually. Try it out.)