This is an issue shared by people writing documents requiring author-date format citations on platforms where a cite-while-you-write-like plugin does not exist. It would be nice to allow them to take advantage of Zotero to enter the citation they require, eg. (Bloggs et al., 2008) in their document by interacting with their Zotero library. A simple way to allow users to cite a selected reference from their library in a platform-agnostic way would be to add the option to copy the citation derived from a selected zotero entry to the clipboard obeying the format specified by their current bibliography style.

This would be a simple way to allow people using anything from plain text files through to google docs to add correctly formatted author-date citations, without the need to build specific cite-while-you-write plugins for every imaginable platform. With such a feature, I can imagine right clicking an entry or multiple selected entries in my Zotero library and, alongside pre-existing options to 'Export Selected Item...' etc, being able to 'Cite Selected Item...'

Maybe this only applies to my own particular situation, writing an author-date manuscript in google docs, or does this resonate with anyone else out there? The proposed scheme could also be expanded to allow latex/bibtex users to copy the \cite{bibtex citekey} command for example, like they can with most bibtex library applications.