Insert in-text citations, where author is part of a sentence

tomka · April 9, 2014

Hi, I started using in-text citations with MS Word only recently. It's therefore possible that these are relatively simple questions I am having.

When using the Zotero plugin to add in-text citations, I get a (authors, year) citation in parantheses, for example:

(Einstein, 1905)

But what should I do, if I want to make the author(s) part of a sentence, e.g.:

Einstein (1905) conjectured that...

Do I have to edit this manually in the text? Or is there a direct way to get this?

My second question relates to the first. How should I add authors to the citation, for example:

Einstein (1905, 1906; Bohr, 1904) conjectured that...

Again, should edit the automatic instertion (Bohr, 1904; Einstein, 1905, 1906) to Einstein (1905, 1996; Boohr, 1904) manually?

If manually is the only option, are the citations corretly refreshed even after editing?

Thank you for your support.

adamsmith · April 9, 2014

use suppress author and type the author(s) that are part of the sentence in Word:
https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage#quick_format_citation_dialog

tomka · April 9, 2014

I found out by now that refreshing is not an issue aftr manual changes. However, when changing reference style, Zotero plugin would change everything back to paranthesis. So I would get

(Einstein, 1905) conjectured that

This does not make any sense - is there a way to avoid this? A colleague just told me that a different citation prgram called Mendeley apparently does this correctly

Thank you very much.

EDIT: Comment crossed with previous comment. Will consider the advice given there.

tomka · April 9, 2014

@adamsmith: Thank you. But apparently the in-text appearance of authors also depends on the style. So in the end it seems I need to adjust this manually? For example for texts with more than three authors some styles use et al. directly (I think ASA), but others (I think APA) spell out all authors upon first mentioning. That's also what Zotero does for the two styles by default in parantheses.

adamsmith · April 9, 2014

basically yes - but styles also requires different author formatting inside & outsider of parentheses. E.g. in APA you should use
Smith and Meyer (2010) but (Smith & Meyer 2010). Authors may also require changes for grammar - Smith's (1996) seminal work - etc.

tomka · April 9, 2014

It would be a nice addition to Zotero if it could handle these two different in-text citations. Of course all grammer changes cannot be included. But it would be nice to have an option to have zotero add Smith and Meyer (2010) besides (Smith & Meyer, 2010).

TanjaRa · March 30, 2019

Is it possible by now to also add the Smith and Meyer (2010) citation by Zotero, without having to change it manually?

fbennett · March 30, 2019

There is some work happening in that direction. It will take some more time, but the feature is receiving developer attention, and progress is being made.

djross3 · March 30, 2019

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/5282/multiple-in-text-citation-patterns

mlacher · August 16, 2022

Three years later, still not possible to add Smith & Meyer (2010) narrative citation style? Thanks!

adamsmith · August 16, 2022

Nothing new here, no.

zotteee · February 21, 2024

Any update here?

dstillman · February 21, 2024

We're working on it.

emilianoeheyns · February 21, 2024

Can I be kept in the loop on this? I will want to add this to BBT CAYW.

jimenamenmer · May 23, 2024

Would also like to be kept on the loop - very useful for my dissertation

Caryll_10 · October 26, 2024

Is there an update for this?

echantillonneur · May 2, 2025

Also wondering about this.

AngyN · August 4, 2025

Any update on this?

munimo · August 6, 2025

Would love to know update on in text citation like Taylor et al (2019) - not (Taylor et al, 20190. Thanks!

giangtranguyen · 2025-10-03T12:41:34+00:00

Has anything been updated yet?

Matthew-hu · 2025-10-06T10:03:10+00:00

I have found that this can be achieved by editing the citation style in the Visual editor (https://editor.citationstyles.org/visualEditor/). For example, in the SBL Author Date style, the elements are accessed under "Inline Citations" near the top of the left column. Under Layout, you should see the prefix and suffix parentheses. Remove these. Then under Layout:Group, add the Suffix parenthesis. Then under Layout:Group:Group:Issued, add the Prefix parenthesis (attached are screenshots). This should give you citations as follows:
Here is a new inline author date citing Kennedy (1963:122–45) and Hart and Daughton (2005:104–23); Muilenburg et al. (1974:23)

You can also changed the delimiters etc. to refine this. This seems to work in general, but I have not tested it thoroughly or with any other style than SBL author date, so it is possible that there are some differences or cases where it doesn't exactly as this.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u10272299/5dtjdrqyhrj0pmtni3h0.png
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u10272299/bu0l4mdxhx994wjpuxx2.png
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u10272299/gvih2cqfjjspty4s7wsy.png
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u10272299/uyh838k7tprp5ih57xa1.png

adamsmith · 2025-10-06T12:29:39+00:00

Well yes, you can do this for the style globally, but then you can't use traditional parenthetical citations (Smith, 1776) with the style anymore. (It also looks like you broke the delimiter between year and page numbers in how you did this -- note the 2007244-52 -- but that's certainly fixable)

Matthew-hu · 2025-10-06T12:45:48+00:00

Yes, it does break the parenthetical format, so it is a trade off. I generally use the parenthetical format less, but having both available as a choice would certainly be better. I guess keeping the parenthetical format and omitting author and adding it manually is still the best way to work with both formats in a doc. That's what I did in my last big project, but having to select "omit author" each time is a step that could be eliminated if it could optionally be set as the default behavior.