Nonstandard Names (Bibtex)

genericface
This may become a feature request depending on the answer...

Some names are not typical or names at all, for instance, the U.S. Department of Education. In Bibtex, when using the APA style, these non-standard names become "of Education, U.D." or something similar since U.S. Department is treated as a first name (e.g., author = {U.S. Department of Education}). It appears Zotero, despite it's first and last name fields, will simply export to Bibtex as author = {U.S. Department of Education}, thus causing the aforementioned problem. So, is there a way to get around non-standard names in Zotero (I've already inputed items as all last names) so items are always treated as first and last names when exported in Bibtex?
  • dstillman
    Well, what does BibTeX itself support for this?
  • genericface
    The trick for BibTex is to use extra brackets. For instance, instead of author = {U.S. Department of Education}, you type author = {{U.S. Department of Education}}. BibTex won't use a break within the extra brackets.

    I should add the disclaimer that I use natbib (and various derivatives), and haven't used this with other BibTex-specific packages.
  • noksagt
    Braces are the correct way to do this and they don't just apply to natbib--bibtex treats pieces enclosed within braces as a single token. They are used to:
    (1)Protect against case changes ("Properties of {Al--Sc} Alloys" would never become "Properties of al--sc alloys" or "Properties of Al--sc Alloys")
    (2)Preserve punctuation ("{Steele Jr.}, Guy L." won't have an extraneous comma (his legal and preferred name is "Guy L. Steele Jr." and not "Guy L. Steele, Jr.")
    (3)Allow for processing by LaTeX (subscript/superscript, font style changes, mathematical markup, etc.)
  • genericface
    A possible solution then would be to export BibTex files with additional braces around the first and last name fields, e.g., Smith Jr, Guy L in Zotero is exported as author = {{Guy L} {Smith Jr}}.

This is an old discussion that has not been active in a long time. Instead of commenting here, you should start a new discussion. If you think the content of this discussion is still relevant, you can link to it from your new discussion.