Way to force capitalization of proper nouns in sentence case

[mtzmtz]

Is there a way to force capitalization of proper nouns when using sentence case for titles? A large amount of my references have company names in their titles, which need to be capitalized. Is there a master list that can be used to accomplish this?

thanks.

[Jon]

Hi,

Yes, it's in Preferences (list of words whose case should not be changed).

Jon
Sonny Software

[mtzmtz]

Hi,

Yes, it's in Preferences (list of words whose case should not be changed).

Jon
Sonny Software

spectacular - sorry I missed it.

[mtzmtz]

Any chance of allowing wildcards in there? So if I want Google, Googler, Googled, Googleplex all to be ignored, I can just enter "Goog*"?

[Jon]

Not necessarily a bad idea, but prone to error I would think.

Jon
Sonny Software

[mtzmtz]

I'd also suggest creating a default dictionary for common proper nouns, especially months, days of week, country names, etc.

[mtzmtz]

I'd also suggest creating a default dictionary for common proper nouns, especially months, days of week, country names, etc.

Another suggestion: make this an external text file. It makes it much easier to add to, edit, etc. Also allows easier syncing of the list between multiple machines.

[whshep]

I agree. We need a more robust way to deal with capitalization of proper nouns in titles. Take this title in Chicago 15 B:

Eskander, Saad. 2007. Diary of saad eskander, director of the iraq national library and archive. http://www.bl.uk/iraqdiary.html (accessed February 12, 2008).

I can add "Saad Eskander" and "Iraq" to the preferences, and I get:

Eskander, Saad. 2007. Diary of Saad Eskander, director of the Iraq national library and archive. http://www.bl.uk/iraqdiary.html (accessed February 12, 2008).

But there's no way to get "Iraq National Library and Archive" properly capitalized (it's too long to fit the window in Preferences). Adding "Iraq National Library and Archive" to the Preferences will only get you National capitalized.

[Jon]

The width of the field doesn't matter. "Words" are separated by returns.

The reason that the string of words doesn't work is that this feature is intended for single words. It also works for word pairs (such as United States). But it is not intended for longer phrases.

I'll take a look and see if something can be done, but at the moment you can't enter a phrase of 3 or more words in the "do not change case" field.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Jon]

The ability to enter entire phrases has been added. If it passes testing it will be included in the next update.

Jon
Sonny Software

[russdquinn]

Would it be possible to have a code at the beginning of the field or something to toggle on a record level that would signal Bookends to leave capitalization like it is entered?

This would be very helpful for German and French book titles.

[Jon]

You might want to control that at the Type definition level. Assign a "Foreign Journal Article" Type, and for that use Title As Entered.

Jon
Sonny Software

[danzac]

Would it be possible to have a code at the beginning of the field or something to toggle on a record level that would signal Bookends to leave capitalization like it is entered?

This would be very helpful for German and French book titles.

I agree with you that this would be a good idea, I believe I've suggested it before - if I recall I suggested that perhaps bookends could recognize from the "language" style whether or not it was a non-English reference.

Jon has given a workaround, but the reason I'm reluctant to do this is that so many of my journals are large imports and they are properly referenced by Bookends, to have to go through them and change to 'foreign article' is a bit of a pain.

[Jon]

Danny, FWIW there is a Global Change function that would help here. But yes, it would require work to do it on your entire db. I'm not sure what you mean by a "language" style. How would Bookends know English from German? And how would it know an English title that contained a German word was otherwise English?

Jon
Sonny Software

[danzac]

Could bookends determine the language for the article from the "language" field? i.e. if it saw "English" or if the field was blank it would assume the title was English?

I agree though, a non-english word in a mostly English title would still be problematic.....