Suppressing author first name in footnote citations?

I have a chapter about one particular figure and, to reduce the word count, I'd like to elide his first name in most citations. It really does add up to a lot of words.

In the Zotero citation screen there's the option to suppress the author name entirely. But is there a way to mark to suppress just the author's first name? (In this case it is both first name and middle initial, so again the word count adds up quickly to at least a few hundred words.)

I suppose I could change the name in the actual reference (in Zotero) to just have the last name, but I also want to use the full name in the final bibliography. So I would prefer to avoid making changes within the database itself.
  • You would need to edit the citation style (and this would apply to all authors). What style are you using?
  • I'm using Chicago style.
  • Is it possible to create a new "short name" field (perhaps using the "extra" field), and then program the citation style to just use the short name if it's available (and otherwise ignore it and use the full name)?
  • Which Chicago style specifically?
Sign In or Register to comment.