APA Citation Style - capitalization

legins
When importing a reference into Zotero, book titles are capitalized, even if the original source is not. Then, when I create a bibliography using APA style, the capitalization is retained - although APA style calls for capitalizing only the first word, the first word following a colon, and proper nouns.
  • Tjowens
    edited March 17, 2009
    By default Zotero recases titles on import. You can change this through a hidden pref. To view the the full list of Zotero's preferences, including many hidden preferences, type “about:config” into Firefox's Location Bar and enter “zotero” into the Filter field at the top of the list that comes up. Preferences that can be safely changed by users are described below.

    Switch extensions.zotero.capitalizeTitles to false.

    You can also use Zotero's transform text function on titles already in your library. Just right click on titles and change to sentence case.

    If you want to force sentence case in all your citations you can add text-case="sentence" to the this line in your APA CSL<text variable="title" and font-style="italic"/>
  • legins
    Excellent, I will try that. Thanks!
  • dee2009
    "You can also use Zotero's transform text function on titles already in your library. Just right click on titles and change to sentence case."

    That'll save me a lot of time. Thanks!
  • Keith
    I'm having a problem with this too. What I really want is to modify the APA style so that it follows APA guidelines for book titles (caps only on first word, first word after colon, and proper nouns). Can anyone tell me how to do this, please? I tried Tjowens's suggestion, but couldn't get it to work. (I've not tried editing CSLs before and may have done it wrong.) But perhaps the APA master should be updated anyway?

    One other thing: The transform text function doesn't seem to have 'sentence case' option -- just Title Case and lower case (which removes all caps, including that of the first word). Can anyone advise, please? (I'm using 1.5b2)
  • noksagt
    I'm having a problem with this too. What I really want is to modify the APA style so that it follows APA guidelines for book titles (caps only on first word, first word after colon, and proper nouns).
    Zotero can't identify proper nouns. It might be best to store the titles in your database in this format.
    Can anyone tell me how to do this, please? I tried Tjowens's suggestion, but couldn't get it to work. (I've not tried editing CSLs before and may have done it wrong.)
    The line should look like:<text variable="title" and font-style="italic" text-case="sentence"/>and you should validate your style to make sure you had no typos.
  • Keith
    Thanks noksagt. It's easy to fix the proper nouns by hand. But it would help if the style handled the rest (i.e. removed all caps except on first word and after colons). With Endnote I could enter titles in any form, and the program would would adjust capitals to suit the output style.

    Thanks for giving the code for the CSL. Sorry to be really dim, but can you tell me please where exactly that line should go? Thanks!
  • dstillman
    But perhaps the APA master should be updated anyway?
    The text-case="sentence" CSL option, currently, will capitalize the first letter and make everything else lowercase. Since this messes up proper nouns, abbreviations, etc., it's not enabled by default in the APA style. There's an open ticket to support a more sophisticated sentence case, at which point it will be used in the APA style.

    In 1.5, you can edit the apa.csl file within the 'styles' directory of your Zotero data directory.
  • noksagt
    Thanks for giving the code for the CSL. Sorry to be really dim, but can you tell me please where exactly that line should go?
    You stated that you "tried Tjowens's suggestion." What did you mean by this? The line should replace the line(s) in the bibliography section of the CSL file that start with <text variable="title"
  • marc_williams
    Hello, i succesfully changed my preference to false. However i could not figure out how to edit the CSL to change exisitng titles. The code after editing left my addition to the far left, see below. When i tried to add it to Firefox it said this:
    XML Parsing Error: not well-formed
    Location: file:///C:/Users/Marc/Desktop/APA-no-doi2.csl
    Line Number 231, Column 83: <text variable="container-title" font-style="italic" text- case="sentence"/>
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------^
    i did the editing in word pad. Do i need another program? Is this ability only present in Zotero 1.5? i am using Zotero 1.0.9. Also i could not figure out where the transform text function might be. Is that also only for version 1.5? i have over 450 sources so any help would be greatly appreciated. See my modification to CSL below but i noticed in the preview it does not show how case="sentence"/> ends up on a separate line to the far left. Thanks, marc williams


    <bibliography>
    <option name="hanging-indent" value="true"/>
    <option name="et-al-min" value="6"/>
    <option name="et-al-use-first" value="6"/>
    <option name="entry-spacing" value="0"/>
    <sort>
    <key macro="author"/>
    <key variable="issued"/>
    </sort>
    <layout suffix=".">
    <text macro="author" suffix="."/>
    <text macro="issued" suffix=" "/>
    <group delimiter=". ">
    <text macro="title"/>
    <group>
    <text macro="container-contributors"/>
    <text macro="secondary-contributors"/>
    <group delimiter=", ">
    <text variable="container-title" font-style="italic" text- case="sentence"/>
    <text variable="collection-title"/>
    </group>
    </group>
    </group>
    <text macro="locators"/>
    <group delimiter=". " prefix=". ">
    <text macro="publisher"/>
    <text macro="access"/>
    </group>
    </layout>
    </bibliography>
    </style>
  • dstillman
    There appears to be a space in the middle of "text- case".
  • RintzeRintze
    Note that support for sentence case in Zotero is (still) limited:
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/5464/apa-citation-style-capitalization/?Focus=28834#Comment_28834

    The safest option for now is to (semi-manually) change the titles in your Zotero library to sentence case (it's easier to automatically convert from sentence case to title or lower case than vice versa). You can right-click title fields in the Info tab in the right column of Zotero and select "Transform Text" > "lower case", and then make corrections where necessary. That's how I currently curate my library.
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