What field controls what: where is the documentation?

Fedster · February 5, 2025

Hello, I am trying to understand (as opposed to guess) what fields control

1) Journal title use of abbreviation or full title and related font
2) Volume and issue numbers, and related font
3) page number, and related font

and in general some sort of clear, straightforward, and structured reference where this and other information is available.

adamsmith · February 5, 2025

Could you say a bit more? I don't quite understand the question.

Fedster · February 5, 2025

Let's assume I want my style to always used an abbreviated journal name (or title, or however we want to call it). Where this field is handled it is not obvious. I can look into other styles that always abbreviate a journal name/title, but it is a guess work, not an obvious 'to choose between the full journal name and the abbreviated form edit this field'.

bwiernik · February 5, 2025

Citation styles are written in Citation Style Language (CSL). Some step by step instructions for editing styles are here: https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step

Full documentation of CSL is here: https://docs.citationstyles.org/en/stable/specification.html

It’s probably easiest to simply ask how to accomplish the edits you want.

To change a citation style from using full to abbreviated journal titles, change <text variable="container-title"/> to <text variable="container-title" form="short"/>

Fedster · February 5, 2025

that did work, thank you! one thing I noticed is that not all journals seem to have an abbreviation, is that something I can fix by pointing to some repository?

damnation · February 5, 2025

See #5 under "Document Preferences" here: https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage

adamsmith · February 5, 2025

I looked quickly, but I didn't see the Zotero --> CSL mapping linked in the current docs. It's here: https://pobrien333.github.io/zot2csl/

For abbreviations, note that the auto-abbreviation functionality linked to by damnation will only work when using the word processor (Word, LO, Google) add-ons, so you wouldn't see it in the Style Editor or when using Create Bibliography from Zotero.

Fedster · February 6, 2025

Would there be a way of removing the dots in Journal abbreviations at all? so that Nat. Rev. Genet. is Nat Rev Genet?

adamsmith · February 6, 2025

<text variable="container-title" form="short" strip-periods="true"/>

strip-periods can also be called on (usually the short form of) terms and labels