CMOS not, annotated bibliography style issues

I have written to the developers of this style, but one of them suggested that I post this question here as it might be a Zotero or a Word plug-in issue. Here's the problem.
I love Zotero and require that my senior history capstone students use it for all their citations and their annotated bibliography. In using this style, the first problem showed up in the lack of periods at the end of citations. I had always seen Zotero do citations correctly, so I assumed when there were no periods that the students had not used Zotero. Then a big problem showed up in some students' bibliographies with bizarre formatting, most notably not entering a new line after the end of the bibliography entry and the start of the annotation. Instead, it shows a small box with the letters L SEP written inside and the annotation begins immediately (without even a space). Might this have something to do with Macs? Our campus is Microsoft-based, so I am opening their bibliographies in Word for Windows. One of the students came in and showed me what the bibliography looked like on her Mac (fine) and then I showed her what it looked like on my end-bad formatting and no line, just that L SEP box. This happened with five students. Thanks for any advice or ideas as to what might have happened.
  • Zotero will insert periods at the end of CMoS notes. We'd have to see an example for where that's not the case to say more.

    The L SEP character is https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/in-ms-word-getting-l-sep-or-lsep-boxes-showing-up/489554fe-98cd-49b3-abfe-9d6c3ba18500

    That should disappear by switching your font. It's a perfectly valid characters, so no issue with the style afaict.
  • Here's an example of what a student's bibliographic entry looks like (without the period):

    Forman, James. Locking up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. First edition. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017

    Forman gives readers an understanding as to why our society became so punitive over time. Most critics were outraged by the war on crime and the impact it had on people of color. However, Forman takes a unique stance arguing that beginning in the 1970’s the war on crime had actually been supported by many African American leaders.

  • oh, no period in the bibliography between entry and annotation, got it -- yes, we're not doing that & should, thanks.
  • I'm sorry that the period I was talking about was not clear the first time. As always, thank you for the work you do to help us cite our research. And sorry about my headline: it should read "note," not "not." I used this as an example with my students to proofread everything.
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