no. Are you sure about that, though? Note that the one field mode is only for institutional authors. You should never use it for people with a first and a last name.

I do flip the two fields after I enter the name.

I"m just guessing but I seem to find "first last" to cut and paste more often than "last, first"

I finally realized Dan's point about defaulting to last used. So for mutiple authors I'll enter all the names, then flip to "last, First" for each. So the next time that I create a new Zotero entry it reverts back to two fields.

If the name filed did default to one field, then a sweet tweak would be to split at comma if one was in the text for the entry filed. so "Smith, John" (1 field) would get flipped to last "Smith" first "john"

There is a lot of gray literature that must be entered using cut and paste. That said, I find the two extra clicks needed to format the names properly only a very minor inconvenience, if that. Given that the alternative is hand entry and that takes so many clicks to cut and paste, I have always been quite pleased that Zotero is "smart" enough to convert one field names into two.

The box shows what you _get_ when you click on it. I.e. when Zotero shows a single box, it is currently in two-field mode, and clicking on the box puts it in single field mode and vice versa. Does that make sense?

Is there any reason "single field" couldn't be equated with "Corporate" or "Institutional"? In that case I could see something like a person logo (maybe a schematic upper body like for Facebook's "Friends" for two field and and maybe an office building or so for institutional authors.
Still doesn't solve when to display which.

Is there really any reason to fool with the icons for this?

As it is now there is either a single box, or a double box.
* If double box is displayed,then field is "single mode"
* If single box is displayed it is in "Double mode."
* You can click the box icon to switch.

It seems intuitive to me.

Zotero should display and use how ever I have it set.

For example the "U.S. Army" isn't a "corporation." A building icon doesn't make sense...

Once you're editing the field, it's obvious. If you're looking at the right-hand column while in "display" mode, there is no distinction (apart from the icon) between "ACME, Inc." in single field mode and "ACME, Inc." in two-field mode. The icon makes it easy to catch a mistakenly entered author. Unfortunately, right now the icon is hard to see and is reversed (for the purpose described here).

Edit:

For example the "U.S. Army" isn't a "corporation." A building icon doesn't make sense...

This is meant to be symbolic, not literal

Here's what Frank does in MLZ (which is where I must have gotten the idea):
http://imgur.com/Mk33xII
I don't think the institutional author logo is perfect, but I like this much better than what we have

Re: US Army - For one, what Aurimas says, but also, in bibliographical terms the US Army is indeed a corporate author see e.g. http://lccn.loc.gov/96646723

How about this?

http://s564.photobucket.com/user/herb1836/media/control.jpg.html

Adam, thanks for that simple explanation. No need to change the buttons on my account. Your instructions make it clear which field to use for what. My problem was that the display was not intuitive to me. I live in the stone ages, use a pc and windows, where when there are changes to be made, I get a box that has a checkmark or something on whatever mode I am in, with choices about where to change. At the risk of sounding like a complete idiot, I thought that the double box meant double field and the single box meant I was in single field. Sorry. No need for you guys to spend any more time on this. By the way, I figured out how to do the chapters by various authors in edited books, and those instructions were very clear. again, thanks.

I'm aware, and I remember Simon or Dan being hesitant on reusing icons, but, honestly, I don't think there would be any confusion when reusing icons in such different contexts.