Incorrect suffix for same author/same year citations

Cass55 · 2026-09-22T02:42:52+00:00

The style guide I use (American Antiquity) calls for citations by the same author in the same year to be labeled with a suffix in the order they appear in the document (Montgomery 2021a, Montgomery 2021b, Montgomery 2021c). [Edit: I thought Zotero did this correctly for my first report but it did not.] Zotero appears to be just labeling them alphabetically by report title.

I've tried updating my Zotero software, syncing, and changing the style to IEEE and back to American Antiquity...nothing has worked. Any help is appreciated.

adamsmith · 2026-09-22T03:20:36+00:00

Documented in
https://www.saa.org/common/Uploaded files/saadocs/Publications/Style Guide/saa-style-guide_english_updated_2021_final08023c15928949dabd02faafb269fb1c.pdf

3.4.5 Two or more references by same author or authors in same year
In these cases, references must be labeled “a,” “b,” and so on based on their appearance in the manuscript, not based on alphabetical order. Thus, a “b” reference must never appear before an “a” reference

It's more common to sort these alphabetically (Chicago and APA style do this), so the style was likely always wrong on this; we'll fix, but might take a bit.

damnation · 2026-09-22T07:32:05+00:00

Nota bene, I've worked with SAA over the years on their styles.
They just switched their style and journal styles over to follow Chicago.
It's likely their guidance hasn't just been updated.