APA style

apbaer
When I try to create APA references Zotero does not follow many of the APA guidelines. For example, it is including the full first name rather than the initial and is capitalizing most of the words in an article or book title. Any thoughts on what might be wrong and how it might be fixed? Thanks!
  • adamsmith
    title capitalization:
    https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/sentence_casing
    full names instead of initials are likely a data entry problem, make sure you have the authors entered correctly. If that's the case, post an example citation here.
  • apbaer
    Thanks, Adam. I don't see what the name entry error would be, and there are other issues like the location and format of the publication date. Here is an example of a book chapter, supposedly in APA style:

    Middendorf, Joan, and David Pace. “Decoding the Disciplines: A Model for Helping Students Learn Disciplinary Ways of Thinking.” In Decoding the Disciplines: Helping Students Learn Disciplinary Ways of Thinking: New Directions for Teaching and Learning, Number 98, by David Pace and Joan Middendorf, 1–12, 1 edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004.
  • adamsmith
    yeah, that's not APA style as generated by Zotero (looks like Chicago Manual to me). How are you creating the citation? Where did you select APA style?
  • apbaer
    In MS Word I selected APA 6th edition from the Zotero's settings menu.
  • adamsmith
    And you added those citations using "Add Citation" in the Zotero add-on?
    Same results in a new document?
    Chances are that you're just missing a step somewhere, but we'd need as much details as you can provide to be able to tell where.


    APA book sections formatted by Zotero look something like this, i.e. nothing like what you're getting:

    Mares, I. (2001). Firms and the welfare state: When, why, and how does social policy matter to employers? In P. A. Hall & D. Soskice (Eds.), Varieties of capitalism. The institutional foundations of comparative advantage (pp. 184–213). New York: Oxford University Press.
  • apbaer
    Yes, I'm using "Add citation" in the Zotero add-on. This has been happening in all my Word documents, and also on two different computers. I don't seem to have the issue with other styles.
  • adamsmith
    It would really help if you could take the time to provide more of a step-by-step. Beyond telling you that the above citation is not something Zotero's APA style could possible produce, I'm left to play a guessing game that will waste both of our time in the end.
    Start with an empty document and tell us exactly what you're doing.

    You could also check the style preview that you can access from the advanced tab of the Zotero preferences or, when using Zotero for Firefox, by pasting chrome://zotero/content/tools/cslpreview.xul in the URL bar. Does the APA bibliography entry for the item in question look right there?
  • apbaer
    Thanks, Adam. Things seem to be working now. I went into Zotero Standalone and then into the Advanced-Style Editor and selected APA citation. I'm not sure why that would have fixed it since I was already selecting Zotero's APA style in the document settings for MS Word. If you know of similar issues happening with Standalone I'd appreciate knowing about them.
  • adamsmith
    no, first I hear of it, but as long as it works...
  • carrie hemmings
    Hello,

    Zotero capitalizes the first letter of every word in journal articles in their "APA" style reference list. This is not APA style! Anyone else have this problem or figure out how to fix it?
  • adamsmith
    no, Zotero doesn't do that. See the link I put in the first post for details:
    https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/sentence_casing
  • KWWinter
    I have a couple of sticks with APA 6th references. When I click the “Cite Item” and then select APA the font and size are not APA. For me, it is Verdana 11.5 and the APA is Times New Roman 12. I also noticed that the DOI is not APA when citing from Zotero, as seen below:

    Alange, S., & Steiber, A. (2009). The board’s role in sustaining major organizational change. International Journal of Quality and Service Sciences, 1(3), 280–293. http://doi.org/10.1108/17566690911004212

    APA 6th, page 191 shows the reference seen here:

    Alange, S., & Steiber, A. (2009). The board’s role in sustaining major organizational change. International Journal of Quality and Service Sciences, 1(3), 280–293. doi:10.1108/17566690911004212

    Is this something I can change on my end permanently, because changing it in every reference is kind of a pain where I sit. Thank you.
  • DWL-SDCA
    See:
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/54288/apa-6th-edition-doi-issue/

    The formatting of the DOI as a web address is correct. The link (above) to the forum thread describes an update to what APA style demands.
  • adamsmith
    and the font/font size isn't determined by the citation style but by your Word settings, so Zotero doesn't have anything to do with that.
Sign In or Register to comment.