How to hide subtitles in bibliography?

teo.w
I understand that Zotero automatically parses titles and subtitles (based on colons/periods/other punctuation). How can I edit a CSL author-date style to only show titles and hide subtitles in the bibliography?

I am trying to shorten my bibliography to hit a word count. It has to be more or less Chicago author-date style but I think I can cut (journal, book, article and chapter) subtitles and DOIs.
  • teo.w
    To illustrate by example, here is a regular Chicago bibliography entry:

    Balkan, Stacey. 2019. “Inhabiting the Chthulucene: Forging Tentacular Intimacies at the End of the World.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 26 (4): 843–63. https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isz045.

    And here is an abbreviated version:

    Balkan, Stacey. 2019. “Inhabiting the Chthulucene.” ISLE 26 (4): 843–63.
  • damnation
    you would replace the variable "title" with "title-short".
    Which style are you using? Then we can give more specific help if need be.

    General editing instructions here: https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
  • teo.w
    Thanks damnation, this is very helpful. I am using Chicago author-date style.
    I have replaced "title" with "title-short" (except for text-case="title") and "container-title" with "container-title-short", and I removed the part where it pulls in DOIs.

    I think the main issue I have now is for citations without short titles (i.e., there is no colon/punctuation in the title field) it doesn't show any title, whereas it should show the full title. Is there an easy way to make sure it pulls the full title when there is no short title?
  • damnation
    You'd have to build in a conditional.
    If title short
    Else title

    The style will have plenty of those, so you should be able to copy this from another part in the style.
  • teo.w
    Thanks so much damnation, so I've got it working pretty well now. I actually found I could avoid the conditional using <"title" form="short"> instead of using <"title-short">.

    A remaining issue is I can't seem to access the short form of the container title for books. So if I have a chapter in a book or edited collection, it pulls in the full title and subtitle of the book, even if there is a colon and I have specified <"container-title-short"> or <"container-title" form="short">. Is this a Zotero limitation or something I can address in CSL?
  • bwiernik
    You should need to enter the short form of the container title in Extra:

    container-title-short: A book
  • teo.w
    Thanks so much for your help bwiernik and damnation!
    These changes cut my article's bibliography by more than 1500 words.

    I would like to submit the style to the repository so others can also use it, is there a form somewhere to do so? (I'm having trouble finding any "submit" button.) This style is simply Chicago author/date, modified to use short titles (for items, containers and collections) and omit DOIs.

  • adamsmith
    Thanks! and see https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md
    but I don't actually think we'd take the style for the repository-- given the virtually limitless possibilities for custom style, we restrict the official repository to styles that implement specific, published style guides.
Sign In or Register to comment.