Bibliography generated without italics for titles (chicago 16 style)

tzachjade
Hi,

I am using Zotero on two computers. For some reason, on the second computer (not the one on which I originally installed Zotero) when I generate a bibliography from the standalone program (not automatically in Word, that is), it does not italicize book titles, as specified by the Chicago 16 style I’m using. It does so when I generate notes and bibliography within Word using the plug-ins. I tried re-installing Zotero, updating, and syncing properly. Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance,
Tzach.
  • optaylor
    I have this same problem - although I only have the one computer :)
  • adamsmith
    See if it matters which items are in the bibliography. Specifically, try to create a bibliography that starts with a journal article or a book chapter and see if that makes a difference.
  • optaylor
    I'm getting this across the board - whatever items I cite in whatever order. They come up fine in the footnotes. I'm using the Zotero standalone alongside office 2010.
  • adamsmith
    edited April 13, 2014
    so you're using the Word add-on or manually creating a bibliography from Zotero as the OP?
    edit: and to be clear - what matters would be the first item in the bibliography, regardless of the order in which you inserted citations. Try to insert a (fake if need be) journal article by Abu Aardvardk (or the like), see if that makes the problem go away.
  • optaylor
    Yup, initially used the word addon, then creating a bibliography from Zotero to a clipboard and pasting into word - same results.
  • adamsmith
    and you can reproduce that for a single journal article from Zotero?
  • optaylor
    Interesting - same results for a single article from Zotero, but just now in a new word doc with a random 2 refs (one journal one book) and creating a bibliography it did it correctly.
  • adamsmith
    OK, could you post the bib for the single article that doesn't work here? (you'll lose formatting of course - don't worry about that)
  • optaylor
    Ok, in experimenting now with the original document - create bibliography (massive bib appears - it's a big doc). If I 'undo' the last action, there's a change in formatting and it formats correctly! Not sure if this will help the Tzach
  • adamsmith
    Pretty much every time we've seen this the issue is the first reference. If that has more than 50% italics, Word messes up the formatting in the rest of the bibliography.
  • optaylor
    Aha, that's helpful, thanks. Yup, the first article had a massive title which would have been in italics.
  • adamsmith
    Makes sense that a single undo would get rid of this, since you can use undo to revert Word's auto-formatting. The alternative, as I suggest above, is a token reference at the beginning of the bibliography that you can delete at the end.

    Unfortunately, since Word applies this _after_ Zotero inserts the bibliography, this isn't something we can fix on the Zotero side.
  • optaylor
    That's great, now I'm aware of it I can play with the reference such that the info comes in elsewhere.
  • aurimas
    Unfortunately, since Word applies this _after_ Zotero inserts the bibliography, this isn't something we can fix on the Zotero side.
    Actually that's not exactly true. (at least in Word 2010)

    For one, Word does this when applying the style, which does happen after inserting the text, but it's before Zotero is done formatting everything. On my setup it doesn't seem to be a feature of AutoCorrect, but a hard-coded behavior of applying a style to a paragraph with more than 50% direct formatting.

    I think Zotero could work around this (at least I was able to manually). It appears that when multiple paragraphs are selected, Word decides to strip direct formatting based entirely on the first paragraph (we knew that). So, if we insert an empty paragraph at the beginning of the bibliography, apply the style, then delete the first paragraph, Word seems to preserve direct formatting in all paragraphs.

    I'd submit a patch for this, but there's a good amount of overhead for me to get comfortable with Word plugin code, so in the mean time this fix is up to Simon.
  • isocephaly
    Hi - any luck on this? I'm having the same problem...
  • adamsmith
    this thread contains two very usable workarounds to this issue - are you saying they don't work for you?
  • cmt29
    edited February 3, 2015
    Additional comments on this issue.

    1. The Ctrl-Z workaround doesn't appear to work in Word 2013. (EDIT: it does work eventually if you press Ctrl-Z/Undo a few times - however, by that point you might find that you've also lost distinctive Bibliography indentation if your style has it.)
    2. The adding a fake reference is not particularly straightforward for a novice user, nor is it very intuitive.

    Is it certain that there is no autoformat or autocorrect option in Word that can be disabled to avoid this error?
  • adamsmith
    yes. This is a well-documented and un-turn-offable (as aurimas says above) Word feature. Even made it into NYRB:
    http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/oct/21/escape-microsoft-word/
  • cmt29
    Thanks. Is the patch/fix that aurimas suggested being considered at all?
  • adamsmith
    no one is working on it, no; I don't think there are fundamental objections to it, though.
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