Request: British Academic Variant of Chicago Notes & Bibliography CSL

vparrilla
Hello all,

I'm new to the forum and still fairly new to Zotero, so apologies if this has already been addressed or if a style like this already exists and I've simply overlooked it.

I’m a researcher working with the Chicago Manual of Style (18th ed., notes and bibliography) CSL style, and I’d like to ask whether anyone has developed—or would be willing to help create—a variant adapted for British academic conventions.

I’ve attempted to modify the style myself, but have run into technical issues with the XML structure beyond my current expertise. I thought I’d share the request here in case others have similar needs or can assist.

Specific changes I’m aiming for:

1. Oxford spelling with British punctuation placement

- Maintain *Oxford spelling* (-ize rather than -ise)
- Apply *British punctuation placement* (commas and periods outside quotation marks)
- This can be achieved by adding:

`style-options punctuation-in-quote="false"/`

while keeping `default-locale="en-US"` to preserve spelling.

2. British academic title conventions

- Use sentence case for quoted titles (articles, chapters, etc.)
- Keep title case for italicised titles (books, journals, etc.)
- This reflects common British practice, where only standalone works use title case.

This would involve removing `text-case="title"` from macros that render short/quoted titles, while retaining it for those that render container titles (e.g. books).

Would anyone be willing to assist in building this variant or point me to someone who might? I’d be happy to test the style and provide feedback. I believe this would be useful to many scholars in the UK and Europe working within a Chicago framework.

Thanks so much in advance—and sincere thanks to the maintainers of the original style for such detailed work.

Best wishes,

Vicente
  • damnation
    British/American spelling is not handled by the citation style.
    The main things between GB and US locales are the punctuation and the way dates are shown.
  • vparrilla
    Thanks for the clarification. To confirm—I'm aiming to keep Oxford spelling (via en-US) but apply British punctuation (punctuation-in-quote="false") and sentence case for quoted titles, keeping title case for books.

    Is there a preferred way to handle these adjustments within the current Chicago 18th setup? Also, I'd like to remove final period in footnotes (as it gives me more flexibility within a footnote whenever I need to quote two or more references) while keeping it in bibliography entries.

    Thanks again!
  • dunning
    edited 9 days ago
    The British English locale follows the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors. If Zotero is set to British English or you’re using the en-GB setting, you will receive British-style punctuation and abbreviations with Chicago, most notably using single quotes and omitting full stops after contractions.

    The only words that the styles generate where -ize is at issue are ‘organizer’ and ‘organized’, which is how CSL renders them, though most users will never see these.

    The title-case style for article titles is prescribed in many specifically British citation styles, such as MHRA. You might however be thinking of Hart’s Rules, which since at least its 1983 edition has recommended sentence case specifically for articles in the sciences. This is a difference between disciplines rather than locales: you will also find this in American styles such as APA. The Chicago author–date system once used sentence case for titles as well but dropped this requirement with the 17th edition.

    I’m working on a rewrite of New Hart’s Rules and can provide a sentence-case variant for it if helpful, since this is an official option.

    As to your other query, you can combine multiple citations within a single note and use prefixes and suffixes to add commentary, so there is no reason to leave out the full stop at the end of a note in the style.
  • bwiernik
    @dunning We could correct the spelling of organiser in the en-GB locale
  • dunning
    @bwiernik That is intentional, since the majority of British academic styles use Oxford spelling (-ize rather than -ise). The major cross-disciplinary guides, MHRA and New Hart's Rules, are unambiguous about this. Using Oxford spelling is also a better way to support other users of non-American English: Canadian English, for example, mostly uses British spellings, but with the -ize variants.

    If you think that this needs to be optional, there is a separate IETF language tag for Oxford spelling, en-GB-oxendict. Australian English is much more consistent about using -ise, and an en-AU locale could be added. Since only one term is involved, and a very obscure one at that, I didn't think that it was worth the extra complexity.
  • bwiernik
    The current approach sounds fine
  • dunning
    @vparrilla I wonder whether the UCL Press adaptation of Chicago is what you're looking for in title capitalization? We don't have a CSL style for this yet but I could create one.

    https://uclpress.co.uk/publish-with-us/the-publishing-process-writing-production/
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