Mendeley bulk revert sentence case in title 7th edition APA Style

Hello to all the community.

I'm a Mendeley user, and I've been redirected to the Zotero Forum after contacting some colleagues, the company, and some experts, as Mendeley Desktop 1.19.8 is not consistent when formatting the titles as sentence case, according to the 7th edition of the APA style (including after editing the "citation style" at http://cls.mendeley.com).

I've already went through some previous posts, such as the Changes to APA Style in 7th Edition or Bug? Creating reference list in APA 7th: Incorrect title capitalization.

I now understand Why don't titles show up in sentence case in bibliographies?, that I should have the titles in sentence case by default (with proper nouns in upper case), and how to use language codes if needed (it also works in Mendeley).

My problem is now retrospective. I'm looking for advice on how to bulk revert the references that are already imported in my library in title case.

Much appreciated.
  • edited November 19, 2021
    We can help with CSL styles here, but we can't provide Mendeley product support — you'd obviously have to get that from them.
  • If you want to move from Mendeley to Zotero, see https://Zotero.org/support/kb/mendeley_import
  • Most appreciated for getting into this.

    What I previously meant was that I'm looking for advice on how to bulk revert the references that are already imported in my library in title case, using CSL Styles, not in Mendeley, and not using Mendeley software.

    As the style does have an option to format the title with the "text-case" as lowercase, uppercase, capitalize-first, capitalize-all, title, and sentence, I was wondering if a solution closer to the example mentioned above (of using the language of the document to force a different title format) could be possible.

    If not, and the conclusion is that titles have to be imported in sentence case by default, is the only option available to manually edit every title directly in the library, or is there another option that could be pursued?
  • You can customize the CSL style to use text-case="sentence", but that's very crude sentence casing and you'd have to manually fix all proper nouns *every time you cite a paper*.
    Given that, I'd say yes, individually fixing casing to sentence case in the entry itself is the only way to go. Zotero has a helper function for that, but I don't think that's available in Mendeley
  • If you want to transition from Mendeley to Zotero, see https://Zotero.org/support/kb/mendeley_import
  • @adamsmith that's the approach (customize the CSL style to use text-case="sentence") that I've attempted, and is failing to be correctly executed (for reasons unknonwn to me). Fixing manually proper nouns seems a far better workaround than fixing manually every title case sentence. What options do I have to find support related to this?
  • You can post a link to the customized style to pastebin.com or a similar site and we can take a look (but I will reiterate that I think you are making the wrong choice here. This will keep haunting you until you fix it in your data)
  • I get your point, and I think you're right, so thanks for reinforcing that idea — as it means that I would have to keep changing manually every time the proper nouns in the titles that I've already changed.
    If possible, where could it be changed to actually have that effect? Please let me know if this is a correct alternative for the needed information: http://www.zotero.org/styles/apa
  • edited December 10, 2021
    Sorry, I don't quite understand that question. If you're modifying the items, you'd modify them in Mendeley. If you want to modify the style, you'd have to add text-case="sentence" to every time the title variable appears, but do note the downsides, i.e. the fact that it'll lowercase all proper names, acronyms, and I think even the start of the subtitle (not sure about this)
  • @adamsmith much appreciated for your support. Not getting why it didn't work was fueling my question. You did understand correctly as I've managed to make this work. That is, to change the case using the style, not to solve my initial problem, which is solved only by manually editing the wrong titles, according to what we talked above.

    Subtitles seems to require a special attention for this citation style. An example of a problematic imported file:
    - Original (wrong): Title of a publication with INITIALS, a Proper noun: and a subtitle
    - Lower case (wrong): title of a publication with initials, a proper noun: and a subtitle
    - Upper case (wrong): TITLE OF A PUBLICATION WITH INITIALS, A PROPER NOUN: AND A SUBTITLE
    - Capitalize first (the rest original; wrong): Title of a publication with INITIALS, a Proper noun: and a subtitle
    - Capitalize all (the rest original; wrong): Title Of A Publication With INITIALS, A Proper Noun: And A Subtitle
    - Title (wrong): Title of a Publication with INITIALS, a Proper Noun: And a Subtitle
    - Sentence (wrong): Title of a publication with initials, a proper noun: and a subtitle
    - Manual correction needed to get: Title of a publication with INITIALS, a Proper noun: And a subtitle

    Even if one manually corrects the entire library, any bulk importation, such as for a review, will add new potential citations that will require manual correction if cited (there should be an "APA-sentence-case" that capitalizes the first letter for a subtitle). As mentioned here, does Zotero reliably capitalizes the subtitle?
  • Zotero correctly handles subtitles in APA style. Mendeley does not. There are numerous other parts of APA style that Mendeley handles poorly. I strongly suggest switching to Zotero.
  • Noted! Most appreciated for all the support.
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