Bug? Creating reference list in APA 7th: Incorrect title capitalization

rdjohnson
When creating a reference list using Zotero, the titles are capitalized according to the case used in the file, but shouldn't they automatically be converted to sentence case (Title of article) when creating a biblography?

Ability to bulk change the case of titles would be v. helpful.

Thanks for this amazing tool which I have been happy to pay to support.
  • dstillman
    https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/sentence_casing
  • rdjohnson
    This is very helpful, thank you; it's good to have an explanation.

    I anticipated that the only solution would be to click and convert each title, which is why I plugged the request for a bulk edit feature since it would take a long time to click and convert all entries.

    Are you aware of any bulk edit option?

    Thanks kindly for the assistance.
  • dstillman
    edited July 1, 2021
    There's no bulk method to do this, no. But the point is that you, as a human, have to manually review each one anyway, so this is just something you would do after importing an item. (Many will come in as sentence case, so you shouldn't have to convert every item.)
  • rdjohnson
    Gahh my heart, my lazy heart. Haha, alriiiiight. Yes you're right I should be manually reviewing anyhow, but due to time, I didn't and now I have 900 items with inconsistent capitalization haha.

    My bad but this will teach me a needed lesson.
  • adamsmith
    (FWIW, allowing the pseudo-sentence case conversion in bulk would make a lot of sense to me -- yes, you need to review after, but still saves you potentially a _lot_ of right-clicks.)
  • rdjohnson
    Hi adamsmith, do you mean to imply there is such a bulk edit feature? or just supporting my hopes and dreams for one hahaha
  • adamsmith
    the latter, I'm afraid.
  • josq
    Just adding a few cents: Please please please create a bulk change option. It doesn't need to change on import, but at least the option to select a category (e.g., Journal Title) and change them all to title case.

    I have imported so many pubs in the last week, and have not been keeping track of the terrible caps variations. This wasn't an issue for me before, perhaps b/c I have been recently importing reference lists from Web of Science ... so may publications and publishing houses are IN ALL CAPS. What style guide even uses that?

    In any case, I think my best option now is to organize all files by date imported and go through one by one to review capitalizations. This is going to be a very time-intensive endeavor...
  • DWL-SDCA
    edited November 5, 2021
    You can right-click on [unselected] journal title field and toggle between title case and sentence case.
  • adamsmith
    But not for multiple items, which is the request.
  • josq
    @adamsmith - You got it. Yeah, It's nice to have the toggle function. It would be *incredibly* nice to have a multiple item option.

    If not the whole collection, as that might confuse the system or leave room for issues to arise (I'm clearly not a coder!) ... but even just highlighting say 100 items at a time and defining the sentence/title case for certain categories (e.g., journal title) that way ... would be uber helpful.
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