Italic terms in font-style="italic" titles got upright in Bibliographies

fanix · 2025-02-04T07:16:15+00:00

I have a book that contains italic terms (species name) in its title:

The Ecology and Evolution of <span class="nocase"><i>Heliconius</i></span> Butterflies

And I am using the Nature CSL Styles to create bibliographies, which has a italic title style for books:

  <macro name="title">
    <choose>
      <if type="bill book graphic legal_case legislation motion_picture report song" match="any">
        <text variable="title" font-style="italic" text-case="title"/>
      </if>
      <else>
        <text variable="title"/>
      </else>
    </choose>
  </macro>

And I got a upright term in the bibliographies:

The Ecology and Evolution of Heliconius Butterflies

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u11030161/ox6q3vglyizxqufa74jd.png

Is this behavior expected? If so, how can I modify the CSL to make the term always Italic?

ashrafbio88 · 2025-02-04T07:53:11+00:00

I have problem with reference duplicated in bibliography although I have been merged all the duplicated reference in my library

bwiernik · 2025-02-04T11:02:49+00:00

@fanix This is expected and correct behavior. When italicized words appear in already italicized text, they are set upright—this is called reverse italics and is standard typographic practice.

@ashrafbio88 Please start a new thread.

fanix · 2025-02-04T15:29:17+00:00

@bwiernik Thanks for your explanation.

Is it possible to configure this behavior? Some journals do not seem to use reverse italics in their reference formatting.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u11030161/he9n1xkhf7ft7r4z6vlu.png
(from doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3000597, PLOS biology, notice the term "Heliconius" is in italics)

Here are some examples where reverse italics is not applied:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u11030161/73k21ozlmshvd3ot2vsc.png
(from doi:10.1126/science.aaw2090, Science, the term "Heliconius" is not reversed)

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u11030161/rx1u7q0ieu56mwqi5mtt.png
(from doi:10.1073/pnas.1801832115, PNAS, the term "Heliconius" is not reversed)

Is there a way to satisfy both of these scenarios?

adamsmith · 2025-02-04T15:40:34+00:00

No there is not, but I'd guess that this is just an oversight at PNAS -- you're overestimating the accuracy of journal copyediting.