title case problem in Chicago style

vsperling
Hi,

I am working on a book manuscript of 385 pages in length, where all the footnotes have been inserted via Zotero. I use a Mac running OS 10.8.5 using Firefox 27.0.1 and Zotero within Firefox.

The manuscript contains a lot of citations to Russian sources. When citing Russian source titles (as with French sources), it is necessary for only the first word of the title to be capitalized (the only other words that should be capitalized in titles are proper nouns, like "Putin" or "Russia"). When I entered the source titles into the "title" field in Zotero, I entered them in that fashion (i.e., with only the first word capitalized: e.g. Rossiia matushka). But I just noticed that in all of my footnotes, regardless of what I'd entered in the title field, the titles of my sources appear in the footnotes in standard (English) title case -- with each word (except prepositions and mid-title "a" or "the") starting with a capital letter (e.g. Rossiia Matushka). The titles also appear in the Zotero-generated bibliography this way. I'm using Chicago Manual of Style 16th Edition (full note) as my citation style.

I have two questions:

1) Is there a way to "tell" Zotero that when it creates a footnote or bibliographic citation, it should put the source title into that citation exactly the way that the title appears in the title field? If so, how do I do that? I entered the English-source titles into Zotero using English title case, and I entered the Russian source titles using Russian title case, so as long as Zotero uses what I entered without messing around with capitalization, the footnote source titles should come out correctly.

2) If the answer to #1 is yes, will Zotero continue to italicize these titles? (In other words, if we turn off whatever instruction it is that leads Zotero to impose standard English title case on everything in the title field, can we leave "on" the instruction to italicize book, article, and other titles (including the names of journals)?

3) Since this manuscript is almost done, and the hundreds of footnotes have already been entered into the document, is there a way to change the setting (as described in #1) in Zotero, and then -- without having to update every single one of the hundreds of footnotes individually -- somehow automatically update all the citations so that now they'll have the correct title case?

If the answer to #1 is "no," am I correct in thinking that the alternative would be to go in and modify all these footnotes and all these entries in the bibliography by hand (not using Zotero)?

I am aware of the information here:

http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/sentence_casing

but I cannot use APA style for this work. I need to use a footnote-style citation method. Is there a non-Chicago citation style available in Zotero that uses footnotes and that "prints titles as they appear in your Zotero library"?

Thanks very much for your help,
Valerie
  • aurimas
    Is there a way to "tell" Zotero that when it creates a footnote or bibliographic citation, it should put the source title into that citation exactly the way that the title appears in the title field? If so, how do I do that? I entered the English-source titles into Zotero using English title case, and I entered the Russian source titles using Russian title case, so as long as Zotero uses what I entered without messing around with capitalization, the footnote source titles should come out correctly.
    You should enter all titles in sentence case and Zotero will convert to title case as needed (the opposite is not reliable). Use the language field in Zotero to indicate that the source is non-english which will turn off automatic title-casing. http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/preventing_title_casing_for_non-english_titles
    If the answer to #1 is yes, will Zotero continue to italicize these titles? (In other words, if we turn off whatever instruction it is that leads Zotero to impose standard English title case on everything in the title field, can we leave "on" the instruction to italicize book, article, and other titles (including the names of journals)?
    Other formatting is not affected by this.
    Since this manuscript is almost done, and the hundreds of footnotes have already been entered into the document, is there a way to change the setting (as described in #1) in Zotero, and then -- without having to update every single one of the hundreds of footnotes individually -- somehow automatically update all the citations so that now they'll have the correct title case?
    Yes as per above.
  • vsperling
    Thank you for this. Two questions:

    1) After I put "ru" into the Language field for a source in Zotero, how do I get it to update in my Word document?

    2) Since I have hundreds of sources with this problem, but thousands of sources in my Zotero database (i.e. not all of the sources in the database are used in the document), is there a way to sort the sources in the Zotero database, such that only the ones that are cited in the document will be selected in the window (so that then I can go through them all, putting "ru" in the language field)?

    Thanks,
    Valerie
  • adamsmith
    1. It should just update when you click on the "Refresh" button in the Word/LibreOffice plugin

    2. Unfortunately not, no.
  • vsperling
    Hi,

    I tried putting "ru" into the language field for one of my sources, and then going to "refresh" in the Word plugin. It took four or five minutes to "register" but then it did change.

    A related question. I found this information (under hidden preferences, at: http://www.zotero.org/support/preferences/hidden_preferences)

    capitalizeTitles true By default, Zotero will recase titles of items you capture. Switch this preference to false and you will preserve case information for titles.

    Would that be a way of changing this problem for all my sources in the database at once (rather than entering "ru" a couple of hundred times)?

    (Too bad there's no way to sort for "sources I used in the document"!)

    All best,
    valerie
  • adamsmith
    Would that be a way of changing this problem for all my sources in the database at once (rather than entering "ru" a couple of hundred times)?
    no, that just affects import, that won't at all affect items already in your library or how they're cited.

    Depending on both your abilities and how easy the Russian sources are to identify, you may be able to do this in batch using
    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/client_coding/javascript_api#examplebatch_editing

    Alternatively, it's pretty easy to modify Chicago style if you'd like to do that, you'd just remove all instances of
    text-case="title"

    See here for general instructions on modifying styles.
    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
    Make sure you actually create a new style with different title & id.
  • vsperling
    Thank you - I will find someone more computer savvy that I am to try to modify the Chicago style. That sounds like it would be the easiest method, in that it would solve the problem for all the sources in Zotero, and then if I just hit "refresh" in the document, it would fix the footnotes and bibliography all at once. That would be great.
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