English (UK) for SBL

frigidilius
Now that I have switched from work based in North America to studies in Europe, I need to use UK English and formatting (e.g., single- instead of double-quotes) for the SBL guidelines. I thought this would be straightforward to change in Zotero but that has not been the case.

While my Zotero Preferences are changed in the Advanced tab to “English (UK)” for the Language, it makes no difference. In Zotero Style Editor, the language is locked in as “English (US)” and I’m not sure what else I could do. Could someone help me change this somehow? Many thanks!

@dstark
  • adamsmith
    You can just modify the style by removing the default locale in the first line or setting it to en-GB (see https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step for instructions)

    We could remove the locale from SBL so that you can set it as for, e.g., Chicago Manual, but we've never had requests and there are downsides (people get confused if they're using non-English or even non-US locales and then get the 'wrong' style)
  • dstark
    @frigidilius, I didn't think to ask when you emailed, but is the British punctuation requirement something that you've found in one of the style authorities from SBL Press (including the Chicago Manual and Turabian where SBL style relies on them)? Or does that requirement derive from your institution?

    SBLHS2 sometimes explicitly asks for American conventions rather than British ones (e.g., §4.3.2.1, although that's to do with spelling rather than punctuation), so it may be less correct not to enforce en-US in the style.

    Another idea would actually be to use the Tyndale Bulletin style. It's identical to SBL except for a few small differences.

    Of these,

    1. is about to go away per the latest revision of the Tyndale Bulletin style guide.
    You could mitigate 2. by not populating the DOI field in Zotero.
  • frigidilius
    Well gentlemen @adamsmith and @dstark, it seems I'm going through growing pains. Based on y'all's feedback, I revisited the SBLHS2 and inquired with my supervisor as to whether I needed to modify the SBL punctuation and citation formatting to fit the British system. He informed me that British spelling is a separate issue altogether from punctuation and formatting, so I may keep the British spelling and SBL formatting otherwise. I was unaware that's how it works.

    Many thanks for the help, and my apologies for the unnecessary hassle. These forums are helpful not just for using Zotero but for proper citation/formatting at large! Wish I'd have begun viewing them sooner.
Sign In or Register to comment.