Turabian issues

Terrellg1949
I am using the Turabian style and find that Zotero footnote cites the short title of the book after the original footnote, even when no other book by that author has been cited. This violates Turabian style, which calls for only the author's name after the original footnote. In an attempt to correct this, I tried eliminating the short title in Zotero Standalone, but the citation shows the full book title.
Can anyone help me with this?

Also, in citing the title of a book section I need to put it in italics because it is a word from an ancient language. BUt in Zotero standalone, it won't allow italics in the title. Any suggestions?

If I make the corrections within existing footnotes, won't it break the code to Zotero and mess up subsequent footnotes with that source?

Please help!
  • adamsmith
    1. Short Titles: Are you sure about that? I don't have the manual here, but that's not true for Chicago Manual of Style, on which Turabian is based, nor for any of the Turabian summaries I see online, e.g.
    http://www2.lib.udel.edu/ref/citationstyles/turabian.pdf (pdf)
    or
    http://www.jscc.edu/uploads/library/Research%20and%20Writing/turabian_endnotes.pdf (pdf)
    (It's possible to do this - see e.g. the MHRA style - but it takes a bit of effort).

    2. Italics: http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/rich_text_bibliography
  • Terrellg1949
    Thank you, Adam. You are quite right. I checked the Turabian manual and it suggests using the short title after the first citation. I pointed this out to my professor and I think she is accepting of it. Also, your help with italicizing titles of book sections was fantastic!

    Since you were so helpful with those two, I'll throw one more your way. When I cite a page range in a Zotero footnote, e.g., 234-38, the dash (hyphen) between the numbers appears longer than it should, almost as long as an emdash. My professor is a perfectionist about this stuff and she has asked me to correct this and make the dash shorter,like this one (-). Got any wisdom for me?
  • adamsmith
    again, your professor is incorrect (that's getting embarrassing for a stickler...). Zotero puts a so called en-dash (–) in between page numbers.
    That's not just the universal rule in English (and in fact most Latin-script) typography:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_dash#En_dash
    it is also specifically described in Chaper 6.79 of the Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed).
    Turabian allows hyphens for page ranges (cf. 21.7.1 in the 7th ed.), but that's only for convenience, because they're easier to type, and the Turabian Manual itself follows CMoS in using en-dashes (cf. note 1 on p. 303 of the 7th ed.)

    This is theoretically changeable in Zotero - though it takes some effort - but any such attempt would be misguided by any typographical standard.
  • Terrellg1949
    Thanks again. I will explain this to my professor. She is a reasonable person, so I'm sure she'll accept it. Your help is much appreciated.
  • Terrellg1949
    Using Zotero footnotes, when inserting page numbers, it won't allow me to insert a roman numeral (such as ix.) Some pages -- usually in the front matter of a book -- are in roman numeral format. How do I enter these in Zotero footnotes?
  • adamsmith
    what do you mean by "it won't allow"
    Maybe having a look at the plugin instructions helps?
    http://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage
  • Terrellg1949
    Thanks for the reference to plugins. However, I'm still having the issue. When I click on the citation plugin, a pane opens allowing me to type in the name of the book I wish to cite. As I type, a drop-down provides options in my Zotero library from which I may select the book I wish to cite, and once I select it, it populates the pane with the author's name of that book. If I add a comma I can insert the page number in the pane, hit the "enter" key, and the footnote appears at the bottom of the page in my document with page number in Turabian format. However, after the comma, if I enter a roman numeral - that is a letter instead of a number -- when I hit the "enter" key, nothing happens. No footnote appears -- the pane just stays there - as if it doesn't recognize the command. Any other ideas? Thanks!
  • adamsmith
    right - re-read the instructions. Entering non-numerical page number after a comma doesn't work, but you can enter them in the regular page field, which appears when you click on the citation in the red box - this should be clearer after reading through the instructions, which have screenshots to illustrate.
  • Terrellg1949
    Again, you are exactly right! Thanks!
  • ldeck
    Just revisiting the original question with respect to shortened forms for secondary references...

    The following explains that a secondary reference for an author who only has one book referenced in the paper should be merely: author, page.

    If more than one book for the author is referenced in the paper, then the shortened form should also include the shortened title for the work.

    See page 5 here:
    http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/PDF/chicago_turabian_uwmadison_writingcenter_june2013.pdf

    How would this be achieved with the Turban 8th edition (full note) style?
  • adamsmith
    Same answer--are we sure this is correct? Online descriptions of style guides are frequently mistaken, and the guide you link to is most definitely incorrect about the Chicago Manual where section 14.25 says
    The most common short form consists of the last name of the author and the main title of the work cited, usually shortened if more than four words, as in examples 4–6 below.
    I'd be very surprised if Turabian diverged from that.
  • ldeck
    Thanks Adam—do you have access to the Turabian 8th edition complete guide?

    I don't have access to it (i.e., haven't purchased) so can't be certain. The quick guide doesn't go into details as far as I can see with respect to these scenarios. I'm just going off my own college's style guide which the above one I linked to, which is publicly available, agrees with.

    Perhaps it's worth creating a customised Turabian style for the various colleges that seem to require this? At least, how would I edit the style locally to do this? (Some lecturers can be particular)
  • adamsmith
    I have only the 7the edition currently, but would be very surprised if they changed this, especially as Turabian is basically a simplified version of the Chicago Manual (and the guide you link to claims to be for both Chicago and Turabian, and it's definitely wrong for the former).
    Perhaps it's worth creating a customised Turabian style for the various colleges that seem to require this?
    no, I refuse to go that way. The referencing situation for students in the US is blissfully dominated by a small handful of manuals (essentially APA, Chicago, MLA, Vancouver, and maybe IEEE) and I'll fight for it to stay that way, lest we go the way of the Brits, where every school has its own set of rules. I've written to the writing center at UW and inquired about their reasons for suggesting this.
  • adamsmith
    At least, how would I edit the style locally to do this?
    The basic idea is to wrap the short title for subsequent citations in
    <choose>
    <if disambiguate="true">

    </if>
    </choose>

    see here for general instructions: https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
  • ldeck
    Thanks Adam.
    Doing a search in the google book preview does seem to suggest that subsequent citations do not repeat the title of the work.

    (See https://books.google.com.au/books?id=fqkgAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=subsequent&f=false)

    The only other question on this I have is that for some commonly known lexicons (e.g., BDAG, HALOT) these can be referenced by abbreviation in footnotes so long as the abbreviation is explained and the full title given in the bibliography. I suppose I can manually place the short title in parentheses for the first reference—is this non-standard or is there some way of doing this?

    Related to this I may need to enter some Greek or Hebrew text in the comments (e.g., sub verbo) but LibreOffice keeps outputting it as Arial Unicode MS, even though the footnote style is Lucida Grande). Manually changing that part of the footnote's font after entry fixes the problem, but is there a setting that's controlling this in the first place? Or better, a way of entering a span within sub verbo's or similar that would allow that portion of text to be styled a particular way?
  • adamsmith
    if you look more closely, p. 160 actually clarifies that they offer both as options, calling one "author" and one "author-title". I'm not sure why they'd do that and I'd rather stay with what CMoS says, but I suppose if there's strong demand, we could add an option. I frankly don't understand why. It doesn't take away any space on the page to add the title.

    Using Abbreviations for citations isn't really possible with Zotero, though there is an abbreviation filter add-on that, I think, does allow you to do this, but I don't think this particular process is well documented.

    The different font for RTL text is a LibreOffice issue. Zotero doesn't define fonts at all, so you can see if there are any style in LibreOffice you can adjust that affects this.
  • ldeck
    I hear you. The main "why" I suppose is that some lecturers have such expectations and are used to seeing it that way, whilst others don't care too much. Best not to annoy or distract them :-)

    Abbreviations seems to be explained here: http://citationstylist.org/abbreviations-for-zotero/.

    Re: RTL—okay, yep seems to be some bug reports about that for LibreOffice (https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67317).

    Thanks.
  • ldeck
    Just for the archives, the easiest work-around for disabling Arial Unicode MS is to disable the font (e.g., on Mac using Font Book).
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