Bug?: pluralization of reference as "figs." due to automatic conversion of hyphen to en-dash

nathan.hopson
edited December 29, 2023
Expected: (Nōrin Suisan Shō 2022, fig. 1-1-1)
Actual: (Nōrin Suisan Shō 2022, figs. 1-1–1)
Workaround: (Nōrin Suisan Shō 2022, fig. 1.1.1)

It looks like the first dash in the "1-1–1" ("Actual") is
U+002D : HYPHEN-MINUS {hyphen, dash; minus sign}
and the second is
U+2013 : EN DASH

Input ("Expected") is:
U+0031 : DIGIT ONE
U+002D : HYPHEN-MINUS {hyphen, dash; minus sign}
U+0031 : DIGIT ONE
U+002D : HYPHEN-MINUS {hyphen, dash; minus sign}
U+0031 : DIGIT ONE

Is the automatic conversion to EN DASH happening in Zotero? If so, is that a bug?
If Word is the culprit, does anyone know how to stop this behavior?


  • adamsmith
    That's Zotero, yes, (or more specifically citeproc), and yes, that's probably a bug, though using hyphens in numbering is also highly unusual
  • nathan.hopson
    Thanks @adamsmith.

    FYI, hyphens in numbering is not uncommon in Japanese gov't docs, but there's also no reason we can't use the decimal/period/full stop as a workaround.
  • bwiernik
    If you use the non-breaking hyphen character ‑, U+2011, I believe that it won’t be treated as a range delimiter
  • nathan.hopson
    @bwiernik: thanks, I'll give that a shot.
    Is there a simple way to input that on a Mac in the Zotero dialog?
  • bwiernik
    You can type the emoji button on your keyboard or Ctrl+Cmd+Space to bring up the emoji/symbol window, then search non-breaking hyphen to get the character.
  • bwiernik
    You can also type the hyphan with a \ before it 1\-1\-1 to stop hyphen conversion
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