Wrong order of year suffix in in-citation/bibliography

w.seo

Hello,
I have several references (web pages) that have the same publishing year and author.
I am using Cite Me Right Harvard 11th version, so when I add those references, the year suffix is automatically added.
But the problem is the suffix order is not correct.
It seems to me that the suffix is attached according to the title in alphabetical order, which is fine. But in-citations and bibliography show those references in a messed-up order. For example, in the case of in-citations, it comes up like (Truman, 1952c; 1952a; 1952b). What is the issue here?
Thank you in advance.

djoh422

Kia ora! I am also have the same problem. I am using APA 7th edition, Word on a MacBook Air (2013). Everything is up to date.

Reading this thread, I can confirm that Zotero was ordering the in-text citations of the same author and year by alphabetical order of the title of the work. So I would get, for example, Williams 2018b on page 10, then on page 20, Williams 2018a, when it should be the other way around.

I altered the title of the offending citations in Zotero such that the citation I wanted to appear first was alphabetically before the one I wanted to appear second. This has solved the problem in text, however now there are some strange looking titles in my reference list.

This is for my PhD thesis, which I am submitting on 30th Nov. 2022 (three weeks time). Please, does anyone have any advice on how to correct this issue?

Many thanks
Danielle

adamsmith

Not all citation guides are 100% clear on this, but APA is: the behavior you're seeing is definitely correct as per the APA Publication Manual.

Jaky24

Thanks @adamsmith.

How are we able to go around this problem? I followed some of your earlier responses to similar issues, but it did not work for me, probably because of the APA 7 edition. I will be grateful for your assistance.

adamsmith

It's not a problem, though: it's correct and intended behavior, certainly for APA style. If it's not what you want, you need to add citation-number as a sort key in the bibliography section after author and date

bwiernik

But again, APA absolutely does not want the year suffixes in order of appearance. They should be assigned in order of alphabetization in the bibliography.

This is a common misunderstanding of APA style, but the last time it was true was APA 4th edition at the latest. Both APA 6th and 7th edition use the sorting that Zotero shows.

Jaky24

Thanks, @adamsmith and @bwiernik

However, I added the citation number, and no changes took place as expected. check below:

<bibliography hanging-indent="true" et-al-min="21" et-al-use-first="19" et-al-use-last="true" entry-spacing="0" line-spacing="2">
<sort>
<key macro="author-sort"/>
<key macro="date-sort-group" sort="ascending"/>
<key macro="date-sort" sort="ascending"/>
<key variable="citation-number"/>
<key variable="status"/>
<key macro="title"/>
</sort>

Any advice or a better way of doing it?