Any easy way to update old in-text citation?

gangyao

Hi, folks!

I'm using Zotero to manage my thesis reference. So you can imagine I have a lot of reference items, distributed in a long MS Word file. As I keep adding new references to Zotero, some of the old in-text citations, which have already been fixed (i.e., not dashed underline), are not correct anymore, because a number of later added reference items have exactly the same author and date as the old ones. For example, at first I only have one Smith (2005), but later I added another Smith (2005), which now should be Smith (2005b) and the previous one should be Smith (2005a). But the problem is that the first Smith (2005) has already been fixed/checked by Zotero long time ago. So Zotero will never check it and update it to Smith (2005a).

Do you guys have any ideas how to deal with this situation? I have around 60 pages of in-text citations checked by Zotero long time ago, but some of them are not correct anymore. I already refresh the whole doc with Zotero add-on but no luck for me. I don't want to go over each page to correct manually. I hope you guys could come up with a better way to solve this problem.

Thank you in advance!

Best,

Gang

adamsmith

Zotero should fix this on refresh. Do you remember how you create the citations of the form Smith (2005)? Did you use suppress author or did you edit the citation? Suppress author should update, but once you've edited citations, they won't auto-update anymore.

gangyao

Hi, Adam

Thanks for your reply! It seems you are right about it. This only happens after I edited the in-text citations. For example, I manually replaced every "p." with ":" when page number is specified, simply because "(Smith, 2005, p. 56)" is not common in our field; besides, I sometimes removed parenthesis of an in-text citation because the citation is already nested in a parenthesis. So in both cases, I edit the citation.

Now, after a quick search in this forum, I might find the solution for the first case:

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/33154/changing-in-text-citation-formatting

---update for the first case---

I followed the instruction:
1. chose APA 5th edition as the base form
2. downloaded it to my laptop
3. opened it with my TextEditor
4. searched and located the relevant lines ">layout prefix="(" suffix=")" delimiter="; "< >group delimiter=", "<" (ps. reversed the angle brackets here because Zotero Forum seems to hide XML line after I typed it?)
5. replaced "," with ":"
6. changed the Style Title and ID
7. validated against the CSL schema
8. installed the modified edition of APA 5th with Zotero

I tested it, BUT, I got (Smith: 2005: p.56) and Smith (2005: p.56), rather than (Smith, 2005: 56) and Smith (2005: 56). Did I misunderstand the instruction? Please enlighten me a bit.
---update ends here---

For the second case, I don't really know how to deal with it... because this is just a sporadic change.

A third issue, derived from the edited in-text citations, is that the dashed underline does not disappear, even having refreshed all the citation. Do you happen to know why and how to solve this problem?

Thanks for your time and enormous effort in this open-source software. All my respect!

adamsmith

1. Once the citation has been edited, it won't update automatically anymore, so the new citation style doesn't help at that point. I think if you edit it using the Add/Edit Citation button, it will ask you if you want to overwrite your edits (to which you should say yes)

2. Instructions for the 2nd case: https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage#suppress_authorsusing_authors_in_the_text -- same caveat as above applies

3. Not sure. I'd try changing citation styles and back. Also make sure that it's not just spell check.

gangyao

Thanks for your reply again!

May I ask a follow-up question of the first issue. I followed your instruction (https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/33154/changing-in-text-citation-formatting) to change locator "p." to ":". Please see step 4 and 5 of my last reply and also a screenshot: https://cln.sh/IVA7qW

I tested the modified APA 5th in a new document. But I got (Smith: 2005: p. 56), instead of (Smith, 2005: 56). Note that

1. all commas are changed to ":", which is not good. I want only the comma after 2005 to change to ":"
2. "p." does not disappear. I don't want "p." appear in the in-text citation.

So, in one word, how do I improve my CSL file (APA 5th) to get in-line citation like "(Smith, 2005: 56)"?

gangyao

I think I fixed the first issue. Now I'm pretty close to the format I wanted to, except that I can't get rid of "p." (see the screenshot below). I tried to locate "p." in the CSL editor (APA 5th) and delete it, but with no such luck. Could you kindly get me through this?
https://cln.sh/9oVkEh

damnation

So, to make this easier for you while you're still learning CSL you can always just copy your code over to the Code Editor here and then switch over to the visual Editor. By clicking on the "pp. " it would actually help you find where in the style that is coded. https://editor.citationstyles.org/codeEditor/

In this case you want to remove the locator label in the "citation-locator" macro.

gangyao

@damnation Oh my goodness! YES! Thank you! I made it! I should have known the Code Editor at the beginning ;-) https://i.loli.net/2020/09/04/f7NAtSUCWawRDnv.gif