Random glitches in in-text citations

I am running Zotero, Chicago format with Windows 10 and Office Home/Student 2019 with the Zotero plug-in for Word. Randomly my in-text citations produce the following errors:
- Include the first name of the author or first initial
- Include a second author in a citation that should be et al.
- In-text citations aren't listed in alphabetized order (aren't they supposed to?)
- sources with the same author in the same in-text citation aren't grouped with the author's name only listed once followed by dates of the different publications

What's especially odd is that, when I open the citation to edit it, the citation appears correctly in the edit box (e.g. no first name). The only way I can correct this is to manually edit the citation in the Word doc (not the edit box) and that messes up future syncs.
  • 1. https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/given_name_disambiguation
    2. Same idea but for different et al. citations which are disambiguated by adding additional names
    3. No, the Chicago Manual makes no clear prescriptions about sorting of in-text citation, so they're left unsorted
    4. That should work. Do you have an example?

    The insert citation box displays items in the same way for every citation style; it has nothing to do with how the citations look in the end.
  • this was really helpful! Thank you!
  • Some of my problems originated in the disambiguation rules. However, I have 7 bibliographic listings for Brendan O'Flaherty but 4 of the 7 repeat the authors name and only 2 use dashes. I can't see that I have listed the names differently in any way.

    O’Flaherty, Brendan. 1995. “An Economic Theory of Homelessness and Housing.” Journal of Housing Economics 4 (1): 13–49. https://doi.org/10.1006/jhec.1995.1002.
    O’Flaherty, Brendan. 2004. “Wrong Person and Wrong Place: For Homelessness, the Conjunction Is What Matters.” Journal of Housing Economics 13 (1): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhe.2003.12.001.
    O’Flaherty, Brendan. 2009a. “What Shocks Precipitate Homelessness?” Discussion paper no.: 0809-14. Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series. New York, NY: Columbia University.
    O’Flaherty, Brendan. 2009b. “When Should Homeless Families Get Subsidized Apartments? A Theoretical Inquiry.” Journal of Housing Economics 18 (2): 69–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhe.2009.04.002.
    ———. 2010. “Homelessness as Bad Luck: Implications for Research and Policy.” In How to House the Homeless. Russell Sage Foundation.
    ———. 2012. “Individual Homelessness: Entries, Exits, and Policy.” Journal of Housing Economics 21 (2): 77–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhe.2012.04.006.
    O’Flaherty, Brendan. 2019. “Homelessness Research: A Guide for Economists (and Friends).” Journal of Housing Economics 44 (June): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhe.2019.01.003.


  • Also, in reference to the above, my in-text citation for O'Flaherty 2012 is not being combined with the other O'Flaherty citations:

    (Cobb-Clark et al. 2016; Early 2004; 2005; O’Flaherty 2012; Glomm and John 2002; O’Flaherty 2019; 2004; 2009b)
  • edited October 1, 2019
    Haven't tested, but is the apostrophe character the same in all of the items (i.e. straight versus squiggly)?
  • The collapse I don't think will work if the O'Flaherty citation's aren't adjacent, but yeah, the reference list seems off. Do check for the apostrophe. Otherwise we'd be interested in seeing the CSL JSON output.
  • Thank you! You were right about the collapse. I tried reentering the O'Flahertys and selecting from the drop down to try to be sure they were identical. Still didn't fix the reference list. I'm sorry but I don't know how to generate CSL JSON output. How?
  • Select the items in question in Zotero --> right-click --> Export --> CSL JSON
    you can either upload the file to dropbox or googledrive & give us a shared link, or you can open it in a text editor --> select all --> copy
    paste to hastebin.com click the save icon at the top right and provide a link here.
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