Upgrade StorageRemove parentheses from in-text citations (redux)
TL;DR: my impression is that this forum agrees that it's either not possible or is a bad idea to remove parentheses from in-text citations. I'm wondering about removing them from a CSL style definition, and then dealing with them manually in ms word. I'd appreciate feedback on that idea.
As many others have observed, there are points when it would seem to be useful to remove parenthesis from citations. Some have asked about removing them in footnotes only (link), and others about removing them for some item types only (link).
For my part, I frequently run into minor trouble when
A) a co-author changes text from “... dogs are mammals (Smith, 2020)” to “Smith (2020) notes that dogs are mammals”, and does the editing directly in word. I then go back and fix this with the omit author option.
B) I have a parenthetical citation, e.g.: “Dogs are mammals (though some dogs think they are humans (Jones 2020))." Some editors want to this to appear as ".... humans [Jones 2020])." I fix this by breaking links and manually editing the final version of the document.
An older thread about putting text inside the parentheses (link) includes the observation that "the reason Zotero does not give you the option to cite without parentheses is that if you enable that, it becomes a lot more difficult to switch citation styles and still be sure everything looks reasonable."
What I have not seen suggested is simply removing parenthesis from the citation style. This would mean it's up to the writer to type parentheses and insert the citation inside. One could put parentheses in text but not footnotes; one could put parentheses for some styles and not others. (And if the writer decides to change from an author-date to numbered in-text citation style, or changes one of their citation's types, then it's up to the writer to make the necessary changes--manually--in their document.)
It would seem straightforward to edit the csl (link), by change the layout in the citation block so that there is no prefix or suffix, i.e.,
becomes
And, at last, the question: is there a reason that this approach would not work?
Thanks!
As many others have observed, there are points when it would seem to be useful to remove parenthesis from citations. Some have asked about removing them in footnotes only (link), and others about removing them for some item types only (link).
For my part, I frequently run into minor trouble when
A) a co-author changes text from “... dogs are mammals (Smith, 2020)” to “Smith (2020) notes that dogs are mammals”, and does the editing directly in word. I then go back and fix this with the omit author option.
B) I have a parenthetical citation, e.g.: “Dogs are mammals (though some dogs think they are humans (Jones 2020))." Some editors want to this to appear as ".... humans [Jones 2020])." I fix this by breaking links and manually editing the final version of the document.
An older thread about putting text inside the parentheses (link) includes the observation that "the reason Zotero does not give you the option to cite without parentheses is that if you enable that, it becomes a lot more difficult to switch citation styles and still be sure everything looks reasonable."
What I have not seen suggested is simply removing parenthesis from the citation style. This would mean it's up to the writer to type parentheses and insert the citation inside. One could put parentheses in text but not footnotes; one could put parentheses for some styles and not others. (And if the writer decides to change from an author-date to numbered in-text citation style, or changes one of their citation's types, then it's up to the writer to make the necessary changes--manually--in their document.)
It would seem straightforward to edit the csl (link), by change the layout in the citation block so that there is no prefix or suffix, i.e.,
<citation ....>
....
<layout prefix="(" suffix=")" delimiter="; ">
....
</citation>
becomes
<citation ....>
....
<layout prefix="" suffix="" delimiter="; ">
....
</citation>
And, at last, the question: is there a reason that this approach would not work?
Thanks!
- it'd completely break the ability to switch to a different type of citation style (like numeric in superscript or square brackets or endnote) because the parentheses would be in the Word doc.
- it wouldn't help with Smith (1776) type citations, because you'd still have to put the parentheses in the middle of the citation
- it would work for the the case where you do want them without any parentheses, e.g. in a footnote
- it would kind of work for the square bracket case (but I'm pretty sure so would putting the outer parentheses in prefix/suffix).
So we definitely wouldn't do this for any of the official styles, but if the above seems acceptable to you, you're obviously welcome to do this in your custom version of a style.
Here is the pop-up message from Zotero that I am referring to above:
"You have modified this citation since Zotero generated it. Do you want to keep your modifications and prevent future updates?
Clicking "Yes" will prevent Zotero from updating this citation if you add additional citations, switch styles, or modify the item to which it refers. Clicking "No" will erase your changes.
Original: (Atchison & Burnett, 2016)
Modified: Atchison and Burnett's (2016)"
https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage
There are plans for a solution that properly implements narrative citations. There are a couple of options in the meantime -- the officially recommended one is what damnation is linking to above, and you can see if you find one that you like, but they all have obvious drawbacks.
Just wondering about any progress on this. I use the narrative type "Smith (1776:123)" most often in footnotes, any help to avoid manually changing these would be welcome.
The ideal solution for me would be a radio button (similar to the omit author button) that could place the author name outside of the parentheses, yielding "Smith (1776:123)". Is there any other way that this can be implemented at the moment?