Periods automatically added with 2.0 Word Plugin

oxlmoos
I recently upgraded to Zotero 2.0 and also upgraded to the new Word plugin. I've noticed that Zotero now automatically adds a period to the end of citations (I'm using Chicago Manual of Style citations). This is a problem in two cases: 1) when the citation should end in a semicolon instead of period, and 2) when upgrading Zotero 1.0 documents because the extra period means that each entry now has two periods, and then of course the citations ending with a semicolon also get an unnecessary period.

Am I missing something obvious? Many thanks in advance.
  • fbennett
    Can you give an example of what a citation ending in a semicolon looks like in the text, with an indication of where the semicolon comes from (i.e. in the Zotero item, or in the citation affix fields)?
  • oxlmoos
    Many thanks for your help. I'm not entirely sure how to answer your question. The basic problem I have is that Zotero 1.x never added final punctuation to footnote citations; I would simply add my own period when appropriate, or otherwise place a semicolon before including additional citations. Now with Zotero 2.0, the final punctuation (a period) is included as part of the Zotero citation itself (i.e. even if I deleted it, it would be re-added if I were to refresh the citations). Any ideas? I'm thinking I'll have to revert to 1.x if I can't figure this out.
  • adamsmith
    it's pretty easy to change the style accordingly - actually what happened has nothing to do with Zotero 2.0, but just with the fact that your styles were updated on switching to 2.0.
    There is a lengthy, lengthy thread on this somewhere that, I believe, includes instructions on how to remove the final period from your personal version of the CMOS style as well as a discussion of why it was added and while it will remain added.
    It also includes a description of "correct" usage patterns of Zotero - including using "multiple source" citations and the "prefix" and "suffix" windows (which work for individual items in multi-citations) for correct footnotes.
    Maybe someone can dig up the thread or you can search for it?

    edit: ah found one:
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/1956/citation-chicago-manual-of-style/#Item_18
    I'm pretty sure there are more.
  • rschellenberg
    edited April 20, 2011
    There is still a problem here, I think, unrelated to the more general final period issue adamsmith referred to. Here's an example of an erroneous period:

    Hock, “Paul’s Social Class.”; Heike Omerzu, Der Prozess des Paulus: Eine exegetische und rechtshistorische Untersuchung der Apostelgeschichte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002), 45–47.

    The first citation is an article, previously cited and therefore identified only by short title. I intend to refer to the entire article, so I have provided no specific pages.

    If I do provide a specific page, the period is replaced by a comma, and all is well:

    Hock, "Paul’s Social Class," 27; Heike Omerzu, Der Prozess des Paulus: Eine exegetische und rechtshistorische Untersuchung der Apostelgeschichte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002), 45–47.
  • adamsmith
    thanks. That can be fixed in the style, but might take some tinkling, depending on how it's set up. But we're pretty certain that the second one is correct, right?
    So without page range we'd want
    Hock, “Paul’s Social Class”; Heike Omerzu, Der Prozess des Paulus: ...
  • rschellenberg
    exactly
  • fbennett
    This has been raised elsewhere recently. I plan to suppress this combination of duplicate punctuation in a not-too-distant release of citeproc-js (forthcoming in the next week or so, if all goes as planned). If it's not urgent that it be fixed immediately, the processor should be able to take care of it.
  • adamsmith
    right - but it also sounds like it's bad csl, so I'd like to fix it in the style.
  • adamsmith
    oh OK - I can fix it for German (and British for that matter) punctuation in the style - in US English as I understand the semicolon would have to be placed in the quotation marks.
  • fbennett
    We'll see how it goes when I get to the fix, but I think the CSL 1.0 punctuation placement setting will be able to control that as well.
  • rschellenberg
    re: US English, the semicolon remains outside the quotation marks. I'm looking at Turabian (7th ed.) 21.11.2, which will be the same as CMOS.
  • adamsmith
    thanks - that's reassuring...
  • fbennett
    I've been looking at Chicago Fullnote in connection with this issue, and it looks like the stray period is being inserted by the processor itself, without any authority from the style. It's a bug, but the code here is (unfortunately) quite complex, and it will take some time to trace it out.

    Meanwhile, it seems that the processor can be fooled into behaving correctly in Chicago Fullnote, at least, by placing a zero-width space suffix on calls to the title-short macro:<text macro="title-short" suffix="&amp;#8203;"/>
    Weird, but seems to work.
  • fbennett
    I've just worked out how to control this, and the fix will be included in the next processor release. (The hack above doesn't quite get things right, actually: if the short cite without locator comes at the end of the citation, the closing period needs to be inside the quotation marks, and I think the hack leaves the period hanging on the outside. In any case, you can ignore that suggestion.)
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