Incorrect title capitalization of a journal paper

by Liz
(Australia)

Incorrect title capitalization

Incorrect title capitalization

I found that the title of a paper in a journal I referenced was in title case and not sentence case - see figure above.

Zotero generated the following in the reference list "Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2002). Human Aggression. Annual Review of Psychology, 53(1), 27–51. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.53.100901.135231".

The title should be "Human aggression" not "Human Aggression".

Is this a bug?

Do I have to edit the reference every time?

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Aug 02, 2024
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by: John

You are correct! APA format requires the title to be in sentence case.

Zotero does not automatically attempt to change the title of the journal paper from title case (e.g. Human Aggression) to sentence case (e.g. Human aggression).

The reason is that it is difficult to distinguish proper nouns (requiring capitalization) from common nouns (not capitalized).

An example is "Apple released a new iPhone" and "I ate an apple".

The solution is to display the Info panel in Zotero and right click on the Title field. A small dialog box appears which gives the choice of Title case or Sentence case.

Select Sentence case.

Check the result because any proper nouns (e.g. Apple) will be changed to lower case (e.g., apple).

You can manually correct any proper nouns that require capitalization.

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