(Un)capitalizing Prepositions

courtneyfriesen
Is there a way to prevent Zotero from automatically capitalizing prepositions in titles. For some reason it leaves short prepositions (e.g., in, of, by) but capitalizes longer ones (Through, Between, etc.). I use SBL style--the SBL Handbook of Style (7.1.3.3) specifies all prepositions should be lowercase.

Thanks!
  • Gracile
    Make sure that titles are stored in sentence case in your Zotero library.
    http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/sentence_casing
  • courtneyfriesen
    Thank you for the response.

    Is this simply a matter of right-clicking on title under the Zotero info and selecting "Sentence Case"? When I do this, my footnotes continue capitalizing as before.
  • adamsmith
    We use a skip list so in general Words could be missing - e.g. I think "between" is currently capitalized, but "through" definitely isn't.
  • courtneyfriesen
    Ok--thanks! Yes, I think you are correct about "through" and "Between." Can I give you a list of additions for SBL style?
  • adamsmith
    yes - some of them may turn out to be judgment calls - some words can be propositions or not - but e.g. "between" sound unproblematic to me.
  • courtneyfriesen
    Thank you--this would be a huge help to me. The following list as far as I can tell are not on the skip list--but according to SBL should not be capitalized. I'm sure there are more but this is a start.

    under; along; out; between; among; outside; inside; amid; amidst; against; toward; towards.

    Will I need to update zotero?

    thanks again.
  • adamsmith
    This will take a bit of time. Once we have it implemented I'll let you know your options of updating.
  • fbennett
    @adamsmith: I'll follow your lead on additions.
  • adamsmith
    In general would like to follow CMoS on this which says to keep all prepositions lowercased. (SBL typically follows CMoS on rules like that) That would mean adding all the Words suggested by Courtney above.
    The downside is that the specs actually (and unfortunately imho) contain a list of stopwords:
    http://citationstyles.org/downloads/specification.html#title-case-conversion
    so technically we'd be violating the specs (which I think we already do by including through and likely some others) by doing that.
    Maybe Rintze has an opinion?
    I'd much prefer to have this follow CMoS as closely as possible.
  • fbennett
    In CSL-m there is a "skip-words" locale element that can be used to override the processor's hard-coded skip-list.

    I guess this will be a topic for xbiblio-devel.
  • RintzeRintze
    We could just swap the list in the spec for the rule that all prepositions should be lowercase.
  • adamsmith
    I'd like that. Should we run this by xbiblio. Probably so, yes?
  • DWL-SDCA
    Perhaps, also want to consider adding conjunctions to this list. I frequently see upper case conjunctions in publisher names. An example is, "Masson et Cie". One could argue about the upper case "C" but I seem to find as many listings with "Et" as "et".
  • adamsmith
    we don't title-case publisher names in citation styles, also, French titles should never be title cased. According to CMoS only the conjunctions and, but, for, or, and nor should be lowercased and we already do that.
  • RintzeRintze
    edited June 26, 2013
    Probably so, yes?
    Yes, all significant changes to the spec should be be mentioned on the xbiblio list at some point.
  • Gracile
    French titles should never be title cased.
    Hum, actually it's a complex issue... e.g.: « Les Misérables » but « À la recherche du temps perdu »...
  • adamsmith
    fair enough - but that's impossible to automate and doesn't vary by citation style afaict - so those should just be entered with the "correct" capitalization.
  • adamsmith
    Frank - could you post the current list of stop-words so I can write-up something for xbiblio?
  • Gracile
    "but", "or", "yet", "so", "for", "and", "nor", "a", "an", "the", "at", "by", "from", "in", "into", "of", "on", "to", "with", "up", "down", "as", "via", "onto", "over", "till", "de", "d'", "von", "van", "before", "after", "c", "et", "through", "ca".

    (i.e. the CSL spec list + "de", "d'", "von", "van", "before", "after", "c", "et", "through", "ca".)

    Source here or there.
  • fbennett
    That's it. (I've been offline with teaching, committees, and a mixup over laptop power supplies.)
  • adamsmith
    (this has been implemented in the processor and will likely make it into Zotero 4.0.13 - see here for some details as well as opportunities for testing: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/32086/the-capitalized-after-colon-but-not-aan/#Item_26 the specs will be updated shortly).

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