Harvard Styles – Comma, Year and Colon Missing from In-text “Author-Date” Citations

tonton2213
I’m writing a work that needs to conform to a Harvard Author-Date style, or, more specifically, to the style set out by Manchester University Press. I’ve tried a few styles from the Zotero Style Repository (“Harvard – Manchester Business School”, “Manchester University Press Monographs”, etc.), but no matter which one I use, the citations that appear in-text are not formatted correctly, as only the author and page number appear, without any of the other required punctuation.
So, instead of

CORRECT: (Smith, 1979: 80)

I get

CURRENT: (Smith 80)

Since this keeps happening no matter which style I choose, I wondered whether there was some basic ‘default’ option in Zotero that I haven’t selected or set properly – I’m pretty clever like that! Whatever the reason, if anyone has a solution, I would be really grateful.

Thanks, guys!

t
  • adamsmith
    How are you getting that output exactly? Have you tried in a new document?

    I can see no way that you'd get (Smith 80) in Harvard - Manchester Business School:
    That style will produce
    (Smith 1776, p. 80) - even with the year missing, you'd get (Smith, p.80).
    The Manchester Monograph style is not an author-date style, but a footnotes style, modelled, I believe, after MHRA.

    What you have looks like MLA.
  • tonton2213
    Thanks for the quick reply.

    I'm tying to trace back my steps, but I'm not entirely clear how I've ended up with the different incorrect (for my purposes) formats. Having tried different output options within the same Word document, I opened a new one, and got the results you showed above. The "Manchester Monograph" one is, as you point out, not an option, so I'll get rid of that (I obviously misread the comments on it in another forum and hoped that it would work).

    The "Harvard - Manchester Business School" style kept generating the (author page number) format until, again, I shut everything down and started again. Apart from meaning that I am completely clueless, does this mean that I have to find or set up a style that is exactly correct BEFORE I start entering citations in my document, or can I refresh/reformat at a later point once I discover or "make" one that meets the MUP house style?

    Sorry for all the questions!
  • adamsmith
    does this mean that I have to find or set up a style that is exactly correct BEFORE I start entering citations in my document, or can I refresh/reformat at a later point once I discover or "make" one that meets the MUP house style?
    of course you can change the style later - that's one of the key rationales for using a reference manager.
    You can change styles under Set Document Preferences (I'm assuming here you're using the word/LibreOffice plugin)
    http://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage#plugin_toolbar
  • tonton2213
    Thanks again.

    I had a feeling that was the case, but I wanted to double check to avoid a catastrophe! I had a pretty horrific experience a few years back with Endnote, which ended up creating more problems than it solved.

    I have the Word plugin and the Firefox add-on, so I guess all I need to do is to track down a style that is exactly right or tweak one that's almost there.

    Cheers for your help.
  • adamsmith
    this may be helpful:
    http://steveridout.com/csl/about/
  • tonton2213
    That is more than helpful - that's fantastic!

    I'll sift through until I find gold....
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