playground:playground [Zotero Documentation]

This is an old revision of the document!

How should I enter names in Zotero?

There are three things to know about names in Zotero (“creators”, in our local techie lingo):

Creator types;
Field mode; and
Name-part parsing.

Each of these topics is covered below. The first two are very simple. The third is more complicated, but well worth the time it takes to read through the explanation.

Creator types

Each name field has a label to its left, which is actually a button. Clicking on it will open a list of possible *creator types* for the current item type. You can change the type of an individual creator by clicking on its label and selecting from the list.

Field mode

There is a small square icon to the right of each name (just before the (+) and (-) buttons used to add and remove creators). Clicking on the square icon will toggle the name between single-field mode and two-field mode.

In single-field mode, the field content is not parsed when generating citations. ¹⁾ This mode is ordinarily used for institutional names.
In two-field mode, the field is parsed to (even) smaller parts when generating citations. Two-field mode should ordinarily be used for personal names. This includes Asian names! The CSL processor in Zotero can correctly format names in a variety of languages, ²⁾ and across all citation styles; but this flexibility requires correctly entered data. It is not a good practice to “force” a particular form by selecting single-field mode unnecessarily.

Name-part parsing

In two-field mode, personal names are parsed into the following parts when generating citations:

Given name
Dropping particle
Non-dropping particle
Family name
Articular

kb

¹⁾

In the Multilingual Zotero (MLZ) variant of official Zotero, single-field names are parsed into subunits by splitting the field on pipe (“|”) characters. In official Zotero, the field is printed exactly as written.

²⁾

Chinese and Japanese names will render correctly in official Zotero. Names in some languages (Khmer and Myanmar being two examples) are not yet handled correctly by official Zotero; users with special requirements are recommended to explore Multilingual Zotero (MLZ), which is able to apply precise name formatting rules across all language domains.