italics for species names

When I use italics tags ( , ) around species names in the title, italics are OK but the first letter of both words will be capitalized, whereas the correct format is that the second word (species name) should start with a small letter.
Example: Onosma dichroantha will change to Onosma Dichroantha.
Changing the .CLS file does not help.
The exported .bib file looks like the following:
{{{\emph{Onosma}}}}{\emph{ Dichroantha}}.
If I remove additional {} in the .bib file and change D to d in dichroantha by hand
(\emph{{Onosma dichroantha}})
then the output . pdf file will be OK.


My system data:
version => 5.0.73, platform => Linux x86_64, oscpu => Linux x86_64, locale => en-US, appName => Zotero, appVersion => 5.0.73, extensions => Zotero LibreOffice Integration (5.0.20.SA.5.0.73, extension), Better BibTex for Zotero (5.1.139, extension)

  • I'm unclear how you're generating citations. In bibtex? In Word? In pandoc?
  • Hello Adamsmith, Thank you for your consideration.
    I use Rmarkdown. The CITR addin is installed and used for connection to Zotero and inserting citations. Better Bib Tex is activated. The citations will be converted to a .bib file and Pandoc will read the citations from the .bib file to generate the PDF file.
    I think the problem exits between Zotero and the conversion to .bib file.
  • OK, we'll need @emilianoeheyns to help then
  • I would let BetterBibTeX handle the creation of the Bib file. To prevent casing changes for words, wrap them in these tags:
    <span class="nocase">Species name</span>

    Similarly, I would recommend using HTML tags for the italics as well, so
    <i><span class="nocase">Species name</span></i>
  • Ah yes, the nocase span will definitely work here. Not sure if there's another way to do this.
  • BBT could easily do this but doesn't because Zotero itself does not treat <i>...</i> as case-protected (see discussion over here). There are workarounds using a BBT postscript either by always treating <i>...</i> as case-protected (see here) or by case-protecting specific text (see here).
  • Many thanks to all of you.
    The "as case-protected" trick does the job, though a bit tedious.
    Thank you all again for prompt responses.
    Regards
  • with a postscript you only do it once, after that it's automatic.
  • That is right, but I do not know whether the postscript will mess up with .CSL files that italicize the journal names, in which all abbreviated words should start with capital letters.
  • The CSL styles? The postscript doesn't touch them (can't touch them).
  • What the postscript does is essentially add the nocase into the title field where you have <i> tags. It doesn't work on italics that are inserted by the citation style (it gets applied before before the citation style).
  • Oh, for exporting CSL-JSON? Yeah, then they'll show up but indeed still won't (can't) affect style-supplied markup. It also won't affect how Zotero generates bibliographies itself, this strictly affects BBT exports, nothing else.
  • OK! Thank you for clarification. i already took the old school path and corrected my refs. will try the postscript for the next manuscript.
  • Thanks @bwiernik, this thread helped a lot! Had a similar issue with bacterial species.
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