Issue with reports, theses and italics

Drossus
Hi all,
I've been scouring the site for similar issues and must be either using the wrong search terms or it may not be an issue for others.

My problem:
Correct italics only occur in the title of an item type="thesis" bibliographic reference after the document also includes a item type="report". Weirdly this 'fix' seems to also only work if the report author is alphabetically prior to the theses.

E.g.
intext: (Tonks,2011) <masters thesis>

bibliographic: Tonks, A. (2012). Why am I not italicised? (Unpublished master’s thesis). London University, London, UK.

but then is fixed when...

intext (Tonks, 2011) <masters thesis> and (New Guinee Law Commision, 2010) <report>

bibliographic: Tonks, A. (2012). <correctly italics>Why am I not italicised?<correctly italics> (Unpublished master’s thesis). London University, London, UK
NGLC. (2010). <correctly italics>Fixing problems associated with fields and Zotero<correctly italics> (No. R114)
Only a problem when using fields in doc properties (as opposed to bookmarks)

Obviously it's fairly likely that this is not the actual problem but I'm sort of stumped and don't know enough code to see where in the .csl it's going wrong, if that's even the case. Any help appreciated.

The system:
Zotero for word plugin 3.1.10
Office 2010
zotero 3.0.11
Firefox 18.0.1
imported the latest apa (6th ed) from repository library
  • adamsmith
    odd - reason you didn't find that on the forum is that this is the first time this has come up. It's also not a problem with the CSL - italics in an item type cannot change between two bibliographies in CSL. So this is a bug somewhere else - either something Word related or something in Zotero itself.

    Can you replicate that in a minimal document (e.g. just those two citations)? Can you replicate it with different theses, or just a specific one?
  • Drossus
    I can replicate it in a minimal document, have been toying around with various combinations in a blank doc. But after a little tinkering I think it must just be a bug or something odd with two out of the four theses in zotero library. These two can change whether they are italicised in bibliography based on what other material is cited. Also if they are separate in-text citations (rather than part of a combined multiple author field) then moving between field and bookmarks in document properties destroys the in-text citation of only these two (but they are still leaving behind their bibliographic references). Maybe the field they are creating isn't quite right so nukes when trying to revert to and from bookmark? Other in text citations definitely stick around through the process.

    In particular one of the theses, when it is added as an intext cite to a document, will remove italics from all the rest of the bibliographic references in reports, theses and books. The other just won't italicise properly until it is paired with other documents. It's a little bizarre.

    Anyway, thanks for your help regardless, I had to ask just to make sure it wasn't something blindingly simple I was overlooking. Now it just seems like bad interaction/bug between processor and zotero. I can live with that :)
  • adamsmith
    could you export the "particular" item as Zotero RDF (right-click --> export selected item), save the file, open it with a text-editor (TextEdit, Notepad) select all, copy, and paste it to gist.github.com, create a public gist (button at the botton of the screen) and post the URL here?
    This sounds like a bug and we'd want it fixed.

    That said, there is a Word bug that, if an item with a lot of (>50%) italics is the first item in the bibliography, that will mess with italics in the entire bibliography. Any chance that could be the problem here?
  • Drossus
    Ah Ha! Yes to the 50% italics issue. The titles to the two theses are huge coloned beasts making them easily more than 50%. Just tested putting something in front of the 'particular' thesis and everything turned out good. That's why it had weird alphabetical priority seeming issues it just happened to be at the start of bibliography in all that I tried.

    I can still export the RDF if you need it but it sounds like this is now a known issue? Let me know if it's still required.

    You sir are a gentleman and a scholar, you have no idea how much this was bugging me (I was still trying to figure out all the rules to the bug). Thank you! :)
  • adamsmith
    no need for the RDF then, thanks.
    Easiest workaround is to put a fake work by Abbey Aardvark in the bib and then remove it before sending it of to journal/advisor/publisher
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