Find and replace in prefix/suffix without removing field codes

smcgever
Hello, I am in the last few days of my PhD thesis and my supervisor has asked me to switch to single quotation marks.

For example:
Williams said: "I love to quote Jim who said 'hi'. Jim is great."
Change to:
Williams said: 'I love to quote Jim who said "hi". Jim is great.'

Don't ask me why, it is just a preference thing among some British academics.

Through a series of find/replace commands in MS Word I was able to fix the body of my thesis. But, I stayed away from the footnotes because I didn't want them to break.

Can anyone help me? I have over 700 footnotes to fix and now that my entire thesis is combined Zotero is running very very slow when I open and close a citation.

Thanks!
  • Oby
    Are you using Word? If so, a workaround would be, just before submission, (AND AFTER MAKING A COPY OF YOUR THESIS) to remove all the field codes in the document. Then you can find/replace the quotation marks in all footnotes and submit the thesis with the correct quotation marks.
  • smcgever
    Oby, yes, I am using Word. Thank you so much for the advice. I was thinking of doing something like that since, in looking in the Zotero forums, there seems to be no other way to do it. I'm having other issues too (started another thread on it, re: Zotero automatically changes things I put in the prefix box), so I might just have to disconnect the codes. I wish there was a better way, but, especially with Zotero taking 30-120 seconds to process one edit (dreaded red line of death), I can't do that 700 times.

    Any other tips would be appreciated. Thanks!
  • Oby
    Note that you only need to disconnect the codes on a copy, though. So you can just do that the day you submit, find/replace, and then toss away the field-code-free copy. Your original document, with codes, (but wrong quotation marks) can be kept for later revision/publishing etc.

    A completely other way of doing it would be to edit the citation style that you are using to switch quotation marks. Normally, the citation styles appear to enforce one particular style of quotation marks, so if you change the style file (.csl), it will change all footnotes automatically. Which style are you using?
  • Oby
    edited February 23, 2017
    PS: For some styles Zotero auto-converts quotation marks depending on the locale set: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/4543/single-quote-marks-from-quotes-formatting-element (see the most recent post in that thread, by @adamsmith )
  • coetserw
    I'm in a similar situation, hoping to change double quotes to single quotes in the prefix and suffix sections of the Zotero footnote. I'm using the Society of Biblical Literature - full note style that does not seem to have an option to select an alternative locale set than the English (US) default.

    I wonder if editing the .csl style file to accomplish this is a complicated process? I opened the file in notepad and I'm a bit unsure where to find a setting for the quotation marks.

    (Otherwise I'll also do the physical find and replace procedure when I prepare the final draft for submission.)
  • bwiernik
    At the top of the file, find where it says locale=“en-US” and change it to en-UK.
  • coetserw
    Thanks, I changed it to en-GB and it converted all the double quotes to single quotes.

    I see in the "addendum to the SBL style guide" of my institution that they still seem to want the title of an article in double quotes, while using single quotes for any direct quotation.

    I'm wondering if this is just something unique to the institution or if others have similar experiences. In that case neither the GB or the US locale setting is really going to help.
  • bwiernik
    That sounds like it is a peculiarity of your institution. I’ve never heard of that combination before. You could edit the style again to Remove the quotes from the title macro and add """ as a prefix and suffix instead.
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