How to get all Harvard types to have italic titles

brodders · January 31, 2019

Hi guys,

I am using Z (5.0.60) to list books, web pages, journals, reports etc. in one thesis using Harvard Educational Review. But these items come out with random italics for titles: some are in italic, some are not. I strongly suspect that the internal formal definitions in HER change title format, depending on what the item is (tho I don't know that - these are stock with Z, I have not adjusted them).

Alas, it looks like a right mess.

How do I easily get all the entries to have the same format (all titles to be italic)? I really don't want to do 101 edits!

Thanks!
Steve

adamsmith · January 31, 2019

HER follows APA style, which italicizes some titles (e.g. books), doesn't italicize others (e.g. web pages), and italicizes publication titles for others (e.g. book chapters --> book title in italics; journal article --> journal title in italics).

That's correct for the journal in question and common across many, probably most citation styles. There's no easy way to do away with this for APA style and I'm honestly not aware of a style that uses italics throughout for all titles (though there are some that don't use any italics).

Why do you want to diverge from the journal's style in the first place?

brodders · February 1, 2019

This is for a PhD thesis. And right now, the bibliography looks a mess, like coming across someone smiling with teeth missing.

I want my work to be tidy looking!

:)

adamsmith · February 1, 2019

You can look through https://zotero.org/styles if you find a style you like better. As I said, you're not likely to find many (if any) styles with all titles in italics, but there are a good number that don't use any italics at all.

Note, though, that if you're writing in education you should check with your advisor/department on their requirement. APA is widely used and expected in education departments, and Zotero's implementation of APA and its use of italics is correct.