APA Style Wrong

idanharat

Hi all

Recently Zotero started citing in text citation wrong in APA style. Instead of just the author's last name, it also list the first name initials.

For example, instead of "(Knapik, 1990)" it now shows "(J. J. Knapik, 1990)".
Interestingly, this does not happen with all of the citations, just some of them.

Does anyone else encountered this problem?
Is there a solution?

Thanks you.

adamsmith

Likely https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/given_name_disambiguation

idanharat

Thank you.


I was not aware of that fact.

Unfortunately, after going through my citations and matching the author's name, hitting refresh on WORD, I still see his first initial.

adamsmith

Try in a new document. If the citation is correct there, this is definitely still the problem.

idanharat

It's the same in a new document.
The in-text citation does not match what is on my Zotero database.

The database shows Knapik, Joseph
In-text shows J. J. Knapik

adamsmith

That's not the same item then, check if you have a duplicate (and if so merge it, don't delete it). Zotero would _never_ turn Joseph into J. J.

idanharat

How do you merge?

adamsmith

Select both items (which much be of the same item type) then right-click --> Merge items.

bwiernik

Select the two items, right click, and choose Merge Items.

idanharat

Ok, there actually were a few still with J.J. hidden somewhere.

Thank you all!

makislog

If the same author is listed in more than one papers and his/her first name is registered differently (for example I had "Levin, Jeffrey S." and "Levin, J. S.") Zotero thinks it's a different author and that's why it citates initials too.

What you need to do is to correct all fields to be the same (personally I changed the author to Levin, Jeffrey S.) and refresh Zotero from the MS word extension. beware of the spaces when renaming!