Capitalization problem in title field with internal quotes

Hi All,

I’m hoping that someone might have a helpful fix for me.  The problem is when I have a title for a journal article, for instance, that starts with quotes itself, Endnote doesn’t capitalize the first word.  For instance:

Harrelson-Stephens, Julie, and Rhonda L Callaway. “‘the Empire Strikes Back’: The US Assault on the International Human Rights Regime.” Human Rights Review 10, no. 3 (2009): 431-52.

You can see here that ‘the’ should be capitalized, but this doesn’t happen.  Is there some workaround other than manually changing them in the text?

In my tests I used EndnoteX4.0.1 (Windows) and MSWord2003. 

What style are you using?  Can you attach it?  And how is the text entered into the record itself for that title?  The quotes around the whole title, if that is the publisher’s requirement - should come from the output style, while the single quoted part should be entered into the record.  So this in the record:

‘The Empire Strikes Back’: The US Assault on the International Human Rights Regime

with a  style where the title of the article in a journal template is defined as “Title.” will come out with the correct capitalization. 

However, if you insert it into the record as -

“‘The Empire Strikes Back’: The US Assault on the International Human Rights Regime.”  then the headline capitalization will incorrectly convert it to what you are seeing. 

Since the title in different styles sometimes would be surrounded by quotes and in others it wouldn’t - you always want that to be handled by the style and not in the record itself. 

I’m using Endnote X2 with Word 2007

I’m using Chicago 15th and the reference type looks like this:

Author, “Title,” review of Reviewed Item, Journal Volume|, no. Issue| (Year)|: Cited Pages|.

The title is entered into the Title box as follows:

‘The Rules of the Game are Changing’:  Fundamental Human Rights in Crisis After 9/11

So the double quotes are coming from the style, and not a manual input.  But in the preview and any article I format I get:

Dunne, Tim. “‘the Rules of the Game Are Changing’:  Fundamental Human Rights in Crisis after 9/11.” International Politics 44, no. 2-3 (2007): 269-86.

Please let me know if you require more information or if I’ve misunderstood your questions.

No, that pretty much covers it.  I get it to work fine in EndnoteX4.  Could you try deleting and reentering the <'The> at beginning of the title and make sure there isn’t a space between the them or something other than a single “quote” mark? 

I went on a machine at my place of work that still had EndnoteX2 and lo and behold, the “the” is “de-capitalized” as you described.   Sounds like a bug that was fixed since X2.   Sorry for leading you down a garden path.  (Remember I am just another user and not involved with Thomson or the developers in any way!)

I did find a workaround though… If you put the word The in the “Change Case” list (which is really a DON’T change case list), then Endnote leaves it alone.  As long as you don’t have any inappropriate "The"s in the middle of a title, there shouldn’t be any problems. 

You find the Change Case list in the Endnote program, Edit>preferences, Change Case option.