APA 6th ed Issues

sswettenham
ISBN and DOI capitalization issues for Textbooks and Journal articles.
Example
ISBN
978-1-4129-9530-6
Qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five approaches ...

Correct APA is to have capitalization of > Choosing <
  • adamsmith
    Fix that in the item data in Zotero, that's currently the only way to go.
  • sswettenham
    Please clarify what and how to fix. Thank you.
  • adamsmith
    Fix the title field of the Zotero item to proper sentence case, i.e. capitalize "Choosing". Zotero can't currently automate that.
  • sswettenham
    Your solution seems to indicate that styles and generation of references DO NOT transform data from the fields into APA 6th Ed for insertion to MSWord documents or export (Default Output Format).

    My assumption in using Zotero was that it would generate APA 6th edition format from data in the fields (regardless of original inputted capitalization). Is there another citation application that correctly generates APA format regardless of original field input format?
  • adamsmith
    that's correct. Zotero does not automate sentence casing.
    See here for some background:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/sentence_casing
    I'm not aware of any tool that can sentence case automatically and given the nature of proper nouns I'm pretty sure that's all but impossible to do reasonably well.
  • DWL-SDCA
    edited February 27, 2013
    If I understood correctly the request wasn't to have Zotero do sentence case conversion but to allow the first character converted to upper case after certain punctuation marks (; ? ! ) followed by a space. I couldn't find the thread(s) after a quick search but this has been discussed before. I think that the thread also discussed modifying the sentence case conversion to make the second character upper case if the first character is a quotation mark.
  • adamsmith
    We could certainly fine-tune the sentence case in the transform text menu and even consider this for MARC and other library catalogs on import - the most frequent source of such data. I'm not sure, though, if lowercase after colon is ever required?
  • DWL-SDCA
    I have seen it both ways in print.
  • sswettenham
    edited February 27, 2013
    The issue involves both sentence case conversion and recognition of capitalization after a colon.

    In collaboration with several faculty at Athabasca University, we have found the aforementioned issues with respect to downloading DOI and ISBN into Zotero. Hence it has come to our attention that some students may have inadvertently expected Zotero to automatically transform malformed data input into accurate APA output.

    If there is a solution (other than manual reformatting) please advise.

    Thank you.

    PS.
    Is it too much to ask for a citation application to generate accurate output, anymore than a spreadsheet application to sum correctly?
  • adamsmith
    s it too much to ask for a citation application to generate accurate output, anymore than a spreadsheet application to sum correctly?
    except that spreadsheets also rely on correct data input to produce correct output. You need to use a consistent decimal delimiter, you need to make sure that items are in the right unit if you're dealing, e.g. with degrees, dates, or time etc. I work with spreadsheets quite a bit and data cleanup is a lengthy process at the beginning of every statistical project that doesn't rely on data cleaned up by someone else.

    Same with citations. It's a good idea to teach students that technology is an aid, not a solution.
  • sswettenham
    Thank you for responding.

    As an enduser/student, I am seeking a citation application that transforms malformed data into accurate APA output. Perhaps a Zotero feature request, just as MS Excel does auto correct and error checking.
  • RintzeRintze
    edited February 27, 2013
    @adamsmith, do you still have access to CMoS? I'm wondering what it specifies for subtitle capitalization after colons. Wikipedia suggests that CMoS uses lowercase, which makes this even hard to automate without a CSL preference.

    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/22828/feature-request-a-simple-enhancement-of-sentence-case-conversion/

    (and APA is clear about needing capitalizing hree: http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/06/capitalization-after-colons.html )
  • adamsmith
    It's just not possible to reliably convert strings into sentence case.
    You'd have to have a list of all nouns in the English language to distinguish them from proper nouns (which shouldn't be converted to lowercase). And even with that list there'd be problems:

    Consider: The marketing of Maker's Mark*
    vs.
    Is hitting the mark out of a car maker's control?*
    A computer simply cannot distinguish the fact that Maker's and Mark are proper nouns in the first and regular nouns in the second example.
  • adamsmith
    @Rintze: Obviously CMoS title cases for English titles, but it does have this to say about sentence case: (8.156)
    In sentence-style capitalization only the first word in a title, the first word in a subtitle, and any proper names are capitalized.(...)
    The house of Rothschild: The world’s banker, 1849–1999
    So that's in line with what APA wants.
    This is distinct from the colon in regular text (6.61):
    When a colon is used within a sentence, as in the first two examples in 6.59, the first word following the colon is lowercased unless it is a proper name.
    (...)
    The watch came with a choice of three bands: stainless steel, plastic, or leather.
    But since a colon - at least in English - marks the subtitle I think the first case applies in 99.9% of all situations.

    So I think the request in the thread you link to does make sense - I'd prefer for the "dumb" sentence case transform text to capitalize after colon, question mark, and exclamation mark. But I definitely don't want to deal with this in CSL.
  • RintzeRintze
    Ah, forgot about CMoS requiring title case.
    I'd prefer for the "dumb" sentence case transform text to capitalize after colon, question mark, and exclamation mark.
    Yes, that seems like an easy improvement. We could document that in the spec at http://citationstyles.org/downloads/specification.html#sentence-case-conversion
  • adamsmith
    oh, I was talking about the Zotero right-click transform text. I think CSL's sentence case is useless and we may as well leave it alone.
  • jenpagonis
    I can't even get it to output lower case words after the first capitalized word... my apa comes out like this-- Brooks, E. C. (2012). The Possibilities of Romani Feminism. Signs, 38(1), 1–11. doi:10.1086/665947
  • adamsmith
    Jen - did you read this?
    http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/sentence_casing
  • DWL-SDCA
    Was there any determination of action about the right click "Transform Text" > sentence case? I am referring to the questions of an upper-case character when the first character in a title is a singe or double quotation mark or "¿" or some other punctuation mark? Also, was there any decision made about making the first character after a colon and space (": ") an upper case one? I have been studying style guides and, of the many I've looked at, subtitles beginning with an upper case title are preferred or, at least, acceptable. Would making these changes to Transform be difficult?
  • adamsmith
    I don't think that would be difficult, no. I think the concern are mainly non-English style guides. In Spanish and French, for example, you see a lot of lowercase after colons.
    I think this one: "upper-case character when the first character in a title is a singe or double quotation mark or "¿" or some other punctuation mark?" should be uncontentious, though.
  • adamsmith
    ticket created for transform text
    https://github.com/zotero/zotero/issues/293
  • mdworthen
    I knew I had chosen the right research tool for me when you used my favorite bourbon in your example.

    I think I'll go pour a little glass right now...

    Mark
    adamsmith Feb 27th 2013 ...
    Consider: The marketing of Maker's Mark*
    vs.
    Is hitting the mark out of a car maker's control?*
    A computer simply cannot distinguish the fact that Maker's and Mark are proper nouns in the first and regular nouns in the second example.
  • DWL-SDCA
    I see that the GitHub tickets related to this (432 and 293) are marked closed. Does this mean that conversion to sentence case with upper case characters after certain punctuation marks has already been incorporated into an upcoming Zotero version (branch, trunk, whatever)? If so, is it available?
  • adamsmith
    293 isn't closed - that just looks confusing because it references another ticket that was closed as a duplicate. And no, this hasn't been implemented yet. I assume 432 is a typo, there is no such ticket.
  • Ralph Cox
    Please advise how to include Producers and/or Directors in video recording references. Is there a work-a-round?
  • bwiernik
    edited October 13, 2016
    In the Extra field, type the following:
    director: Last || First E.

    Edit: Producer is not currently supported by CSL.
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