Chicago Style Bibliography Not Alphabetical

ssimington · March 23, 2020

When I create a Chicago Style bibliography, it sorts my citations by article, whether there is an author or not. How do I get it to sort correctly? (Author first, then by title if no author is listed)

adamsmith · March 23, 2020

That shouldn't happen. Which Chicago style? Do you have an example (excerpt from the bibliography)

ssimington · March 23, 2020

I'm using Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition (full note). But I also tried author-date and note as well. All had the same issue. It's pulling in like web page titles and publishers as authors as well.

Here's an excerpt:

“5 Pittsburgh Neighborhoods You Can’t Miss This Small Business Saturday.” Pittsburgh Current, November 23, 2018. https://www.pittsburghcurrent.com/support-local-small-business/.

21st Street Coffee and Tea. “21st Street Coffee and Tea.” Accessed February 19, 2020. https://21streetcoffee.com/.

Discover the Burgh. “39 Pittsburgh Coffee Shops to Grab a Delicious Brew,” June 29, 2015. https://www.discovertheburgh.com/pittsburgh-coffee-shops/.

Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. “937 Gallery.” Accessed February 23, 2020. https://trustarts.org/pct_home/visual-arts/galleries/937.

“2014 Annual Report.” The Heinz Endowments, 2014. http://www.heinz.org/UserFiles/Library/2014_Annual_Report.pdf.

And another excerpt:

Delano, Jon. “Small Business Saturday Encourages Pittsburghers To Shop Local.” KDKA CBS Pittsburgh, November 29, 2019. https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2019/11/29/small-business-saturday-in-pittsburgh/.

Denning, Stephanie. “Andrew Carnegie, On Achieving Wealth And Prosperity.” Forbes, July 30, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniedenning/2018/07/30/andrew-carnegie-on-achieving-wealth-and-prosperity/#47753c326e1c.

City of Pittsburgh. “Department of City Planning.” Accessed February 15, 2020. http://pittsburghpa.gov/dcp/index.html.

Foundation Directory Online. “Edith L. Trees Charitable Trust.” Accessed February 19, 2020. https://fconline.foundationcenter.org/fdo-grantmaker-profile?key=TREE004.

ssimington · March 25, 2020

Can anyone help with the above problem?

adamsmith · March 26, 2020

Sorry, I don't really understand what's going on. How exactly are you generating these bibliographies?

ssimington · March 26, 2020

I'm selecting all of my team's sources in Zotero, right click, "create bibliography from items," selecting Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition (full note), output mode = bibliography, output method = copy to clipboard, then pasting into document

adamsmith · March 26, 2020

Would you mind exporting just those 8 items:
Select in Zotero, right-click --> Export selected items --> CSL JSON

Then open the file in a text editor like notepad, select all, copy and paste to
https://hastebin.com/ (or a comparable site -- gist.github.com if you have an account on github, pastebin etc.)
Save (top right) and post the URL here.

ssimington · March 26, 2020

https://ssimington.github.io/zotero-help/

bwiernik · March 26, 2020

Can you actually just post that as a plain text file (e.g., a .json file)? The page you linked to parsed all of the quote marks into smart typographic quotes, which won't work.

adamsmith · March 26, 2020

Thanks -- I can replicate that for Chicago (full note). The author date version sorts correctly for me, though, so if you're in a rush, use that while we troubleshoot this:

21st Street Coffee and Tea.” n.d. 21st Street Coffee and Tea. Accessed February 19, 2020. https://21streetcoffee.com/.

“39 Pittsburgh Coffee Shops to Grab a Delicious Brew.” 2015. Discover the Burgh (blog). June 29, 2015. https://www.discovertheburgh.com/pittsburgh-coffee-shops/.

“937 Gallery.” n.d. Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. Accessed February 23, 2020. https://trustarts.org/pct_home/visual-arts/galleries/937.

“2014 Annual Report.” 2014. The Heinz Endowments. http://www.heinz.org/UserFiles/Library/2014_Annual_Report.pdf.

Delano, Jon. 2019. “Small Business Saturday Encourages Pittsburghers To Shop Local.” KDKA CBS Pittsburgh. November 29, 2019. https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2019/11/29/small-business-saturday-in-pittsburgh/.

Denning, Stephanie. 2018. “Andrew Carnegie, On Achieving Wealth And Prosperity.” Forbes, July 30, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniedenning/2018/07/30/andrew-carnegie-on-achieving-wealth-and-prosperity/#47753c326e1c.
“Department of City Planning.” n.d. City of Pittsburgh. Accessed February 15, 2020. http://pittsburghpa.gov/dcp/index.html.

“Edith L. Trees Charitable Trust.” n.d. Foundation Directory Online. Accessed February 19, 2020. https://fconline.foundationcenter.org/fdo-grantmaker-profile?key=TREE004.

Pittsburgh Current. 2018. “5 Pittsburgh Neighborhoods You Can’t Miss This Small Business Saturday,” November 23, 2018. https://www.pittsburghcurrent.com/suppo

adamsmith · March 26, 2020

I've put the fixed JSON here: https://gist.github.com/adam3smith/da8103c23566c02124a9afa5fa7810e3

ssimington · March 28, 2020

It's pulling website titles and placing them in the front as if they were authors rather than after the article title. I think that would resolve it if I could just fix that. Is that a hidden setting somewhere?

ssimington · March 28, 2020

Author-date is now sorting correctly for me. (It wasn't previously) Still not sure why note doesn't work. But author-date should suffice for our report.

qcox01 · February 25, 2021

I am having the same issue. Has this been fixed? Also, how do I change to "author-date" as a temporary solution?

agordiienko · February 26, 2021

Same here... For some reason, Zotero treats web-article titles as authors. Can you please fix it? I am using the CMOS (full note).

kweigold · July 28, 2021

To fix this you need to edit the "Note" citation style. The macro name "contributors" has an if function for the web types of citations and the text variable should = "title" not "container-title". This fixed it for me.