Citations adding the author's first name

daveyal · August 31, 2019

Since the latest Zotero update whenever I insert most of my citations they are suddenly including the first name of the first author of any reference. It is bizarre and I can edit each individual citation but if I update my citations the first name of the first author of any reference reinserts itself into the citations. Has anyone had a similar issue or does anyone know why this is happening and how I can solve it?

Thank you,

Alex

bwiernik · August 31, 2019

See https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/given_name_disambiguation

mienmusic · December 5, 2019

I have authors with the same last name. In this case, Zotero is including the first initial in my in-text citation which is not according to APA style guidelines.

damnation · December 5, 2019

APA specifies to add initials:

"Authors With the Same Last Name: To prevent confusion, use first initials with the last names.
(E. Johnson, 2001; L. Johnson, 1998)"

mienmusic · December 6, 2019

I assumed that was only when they are in the same citation?

damnation · December 6, 2019

No, not at all. You need to be able to disambiguate the source throughout a document.

mienmusic · December 9, 2019

However, it is citing with the first initial before the last name. The following are taken from my paper:

(Z. Sun & Leung, 2014)
(W. Zhang, 2000b)

mienmusic · December 9, 2019

this began happening after a recent upgrade

adamsmith · December 9, 2019

All of those citation look like correct APA style (assuming there are other Sun and Zhang first authors in the paper). See the example damnation posted above from the APA site.

mienmusic · December 9, 2019

OK, understand now. Thank you for your help!