APA in-text workarounds

danfajans
There are many discussion topics about the technological limitations that prevent Zotero from correctly implementing APA in-text citations, but I have not seen any that clearly articulate the problems or that discuss how people are working around them.

APA in-text citations look like:

"Smith & Johnston (2006) posit that this thing happened (p. 47)."

or

"According to Kernis, Cornell, Sun, Berry, & Harlow (1993) this other thing happened (p. 98)." <----- first instance
"Kernis et al. (1993) argue that the thing that really happened is this other thing (p. 276)." <----- subsequent instances

Ideally it would be possible to insert in-text citations using the Zotero Word plugin for both the opening "Author(s) (year)" and then another for the closing - (p. xx)

I guess my first question is whether I have missed a way to get Zotero to do this. Have other users been able to set this up with a plugin or a custom style so that a kludgy workaround is unnecessary?

The other question is whether others have found kludgy workarounds that they like.

Here's my seven step workaround:
1. Create a normal citation for the opening part
2. Cut the author name(s)
3. Delete the extra comma and space from within the citation
4. Paste the author names before the open paren.
5. Create a citation with the author name suppressed for the closing part
6. Delete the year and extra comma
7. Spend a few minutes questioning why I'm going to the trouble of using the plugin for this rather than just doing it manually, given that the fields aren't going to update based on the order of appearance or my Zotero library metadata anyway

I recommend skipping step 7 if you can manage to
  • bwiernik
    edited November 26, 2017
    Definitely don't manually edit the citation text—that will prevent Zotero from updating the citations automatically.

    To get "Author (Year)" style references, in the Add Citation window, click on the blue bubble for the reference and choose "Suppress Author". Then manually type the authors' names in text.

    See http://zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage#customizing_cites

    Automation of both (Author, Year) and Author (Year) formats is not currently supported by CSL, the programming language Zotero (and most other reference managers) use for formatting citations. The feature has been frequently requested and will likely be added in a future version, but it is a very complex set of changes, so it will be some time before it is implemented.
  • danfajans
    "Definitely don't manually edit the citation text—that will prevent Zotero from updating the citations automatically."

    Yes, but Zotero won't update the citation automatically if I enter the names manually either, so I'm not going to get that benefit either way I do it. I'd prefer to at least get the speed and accuracy benefit of copying the name(s) from the citation and deleting the original.

    Do you know if it's the same limitation that prevents having an option to suppress the year for page number entries without manually deleting them?
  • adamsmith
    It's more significant, though -- you'll e.g. break Zotero's ability to change citation styles. I'd really advise against manually editing citations.

    The page numbers are simpler, but aren't handled because there's little benefit and real GUI costs to all those options: if you manually select "suppress author and year" you'd have to manually adjust those references when you move them anyway, so there's really no reason that's any better than just typing the page number in parentheses.
  • danfajans
    edited November 27, 2017
    I was able to make what appears to be a working edit to the style that allows for Author (year) in-text citations.

    http://csl.mendeley.com/styles/501719161/APA-Auth-Date-Fix

    Is there something I'm missing? It seems like people have been bringing this up for years on this forum and being told it's impossible, so it's hard to imagine it's as simple as this.

    I hope I don't sound like I'm complaining about something that's really helpful for free. Thank you very much bwiernik and adamsmith!
  • adamsmith
    Right, but this doesn't allow you to use both citation formats in a text
  • bwiernik
    So if you use that style, all of your citations will be Author (Date) instead of (Author, Date). It’s not possible currently for Zotero to automate both formats at once in a document.
  • danfajans
    Yes, I can see this still requires some manual override. I guess for me, given that either way I'm entering citation data manually that won't update based on the Zotero database, I'd rather do it on these ones since I use them much less frequently. They're all kludges, but this seems like the least likely to cause trouble.

    Incidentally...
    https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/issues/1

    I'm not a coder but this makes it sound like CSL has had the capability to do this since at least 2011, and that the absence of implementation is in Zotero, not CSL. Am I misreading that?
  • LiborA
    I'm not a coder but this makes it sound like CSL has had the capability to do this since at least 2011, and that the absence of implementation is in Zotero, not CSL. Am I misreading that?
    I think you are misleading. Nothing as "alternatelayout" is not in the CSL - see specification on http://docs.citationstyles.org/en/1.0.1/specification.html
  • danfajans
    Look at the last comment, not the first.
  • LiborA
    edited November 27, 2017
    Yes, I read all comments. It is not so important how the request for "alternative layout" will be sent to the CSL processor. You still have to define this layout in the CSL and the current specification of CSL does not have this feature. The "minus" sign only says to the CSL processor to suppress author, nothing else.
    EDIT: Suppress author is independent of the CSL layout specification.
  • bwiernik
    You are misunderstanding. CSL only supports one citation layout per style. You can either specify the style to use Author (Date) or (Author, Date). Considering that (Author, Date) will almost always be much more common in a paper, that is what I recommend. When I wrote, I mostly use constructions like “Smith and colleagues” to avoid having to type all the authors’ names out.

    Regarding various methods for doing this, Suppress Author is the least likely to break you document or cause unexpected breaking of links to Zotero. Other methods that involve manually typing parentheses or editing the formatted text of a citation aren’t the way Zotero is designed to be used—it can lead to unexpected results.

    I imagine that you have many more (Author, Date) citations in your paper than other formats. I recommend that you just try to use the recommended Suppress Author method. I think you will find it is much less work that you are anticipating.

    CSL is well-aware of the desire to have both formats, but adding this functionality is very complicated because styles need to be able to automatically switch between Author-Date and numeric styles. Once the details are worked out, all styles would also have to be updated for the new format.
  • adamsmith
    The mechanism discussed by fbennett in that thread (which doesn't exist in CSL, but does exist in several of the processors used to implement CSL) also just doesn't work for APA. The APA Manual prescribes a different format for in-text and in-parentheses citations, using "and" and "and others" in the text and "&" and "et al." in parentheses, so simply shifting the parentheses gets everything but single author publications wrong.

    (The other problem of the mechanism is that it doesn't, as currently implemented, work with switches between author-date and other -- numerical and footnote -- styles).
  • danfajans
    That all makes sense. I really appreciate all of your thoughtful responses!

    Adam, you may be thinking of a different style, APA doesn't use "and others," but you're right about "&" and "and" being different inside and outside the parens. It's too bad there's not a simpler solution, but as you're all making clear, it's not a simple problem.

    After wasting some time stepping on the mines y'all warned me about I have been having reasonably good luck doing it with suppress author and manual entry of the page numbers. It's a bummer that the author names won't update in the event of reordering or database changes, but in reality that's a pretty luxurious problem to have.

    Thanks again!
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