Language field ignored when refreshing

larm
I am struggling with the automatic capitalization of titles in Chicago styles. I need to avoid it in all non-English references. I know that the trick is to indicate the reference's language in the appropriate field.
Unfortunately, for me this only works when I add the language before citing the reference in a document. If I do it the other way round, i.e. first cite and then fill in the reference's language and refresh, Zotero ignores the language code and keeps on capitalizing the title.
I assume this is a bug. If not, what am I doing wrong?
  • adamsmith
    In general this works -- I just tested to make sure.

    First thing to check is whether you can reproduce this in a new document:
    - Insert a non-English source with an empty language field using one of the Chicago styles in a Word/LO document using the Add/edit citation button
    - Check that the title is incorrectly titlecased
    - Add the language in Zotero
    - Click the refresh button in the Word/LO add-on

    Does this revert to the correct sentence case of the title?
  • larm
    I have done that in a new Word document and it works fine.
    It also works on several existing documents.

    However, it does not work on one specific Word file, which happens to be the doctoral dissertation I am writing. It is a 300,000+ word document with 1,200+ footnotes; perhaps it is because of that?
  • dstillman
    There’s a very good chance you’re just not waiting long enough for it to update the whole document. You can go to Help → Debug Output Logging → View Output to see if it’s still doing anything.
  • larm
    Refreshing the document does not take that long, only 1 or 2 minutes.

    I have done a new experiment. I have copied a chapter of my dissertation to a blank document. The problem of non-English capitalization persists.
    However, if I add a new reference to that document without language information, then indicate its language in Zotero and refresh, it works fine: capitals disappear.

    It also works well if I delete an old reference and add it again. I have gone back to my dissertation file and tried the delete-add method. It works! However, I don't look forward to applying that method to hundreds of citations.
  • dstillman
    edited August 28, 2022
    It sounds like your citations are just unlinked from your database — e.g., due to deleting items in Zotero instead of merging them properly, or using a different copy of your Zotero database created via export/import. See this section for how to test whether the citations are still linked. (The page is about a different issue, but the test is the same.) In that case replacing the citations is the only option.
  • larm
    That's exactly it! Most of my citations are unlinked.
    So delete and add is the only option, I am afraid.
    Thanks for your help!
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