Turabian - Title Case Problem with Latest Zotero Update?

cbutosi
Hi Everyone,

I just updated Zotero to 3.0.3 (Firefox w/ Word 2007 plug-in). I have noticed that, upon creating a bibliography in Word, that Turabian renders book titles in title-case rather than sentence-case.

Rule 19.1.3. in Turabian, 7th confirms the use of sentence case for book titles.

Has anyone else noticed this problem, or is it perhaps a settings problem on my end? If it's the latter, where would I look for this issue?

Thanks all,

Craig
  • adamsmith
    I assume you're referring to Turabian author-date?
    We're just using Chicago Manual author-date here and the CMoS has switched to title case in the 16th edition. Since Turabian is based on CMoS and regularly updates based on CMoS updates, I think it's reasonable to assume that title casing is OK with Turabian now (and will likely be included in the next edition).
  • cbutosi
    Hi adamsmith,

    Apologies; yes, I was referring to author-date; and thank-you for clarifying this.

    Craig
  • paigecc516
    I am a "non-techy" user, and I have the same problem. My institution requires sentence style titles, and even though I manually change each entry, when I create the Reference List, Zotero reverts everything to title case. Is there any way to force Zotero to use sentence style?
  • adamsmith
    It's possible to change in the style - though that involves a little effort (if you look around on the forum some you'll probably be able to find step-by-step instructions for this) - and it's possible to just use a different style, e.g. American Psychological Association.
    What are the exact requirements of your institution?
  • paigecc516
    We are required to use Turabian, parenthetical citation in the text, and reference list style for the list. There are additional modifications regarding placing the punctuation outside the quotation mark, and all titles, subtitles, chapters and articles must be capitalized sentence style.
  • adamsmith
    Well, first of all that means that your school is run by morons. If they're going to require a specific citation style of students - which makes no sense in the first place - they should at least stick to a standard.

    But more helpfully:
    Have a look at this:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step

    You want to start with the style called "Chicago Manual of Style (author-date)" (_not_ Turabian author-date).

    In that style, do a search for
    text-case="title" and delete all instances of it (but make sure to keep everything else in the respective line intact).
    Then, to get punctuation outside quotation marks, add in the second line of the style that starts with
    <style ....

    default-locale="en-GB"

    that's all you need to do. Don't be intimidated by the fact that this looks like "code" - just follow the instructions thoroughly and this is going to be easy.
  • paigecc516
    Thank you!
    After a couple of tries, I got it to work by editing in the Zotero Reference Test pane, because I could immediately see any error message if I deleted incorrectly. I didn't change the period inside quotations (it's for text, not reference list). My last question is this: how do I save it as a custom style? Right now, I have it saved in TextEditor.
  • adamsmith
    change title and id of the style as directed on the link above - lets say you're setting the id to turabian-adjusted
    Make sure TextEdit is set to plaintext (this is under "Format" I believe)
    Then just save the file as turabian-adjusted.csl
    that's it.
  • paigecc516
    Okay, got it. Thanks!
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