Q. How do I add rich text formatting (i.e. bold, italics, subscripts, superscripts) to a title in Zotero?

There are many different ways to add rich text formatting to a title field in Zotero. Here are three:

1. Add rich text formatting using HTML tags in the title field in Zotero. Useful tags are:

• <i> and </i> for italics

• <b> and </b> for bold

• ^and for ^superscript

• _and for _subscript

• <span style="font-variant:small-caps;"> and </span> for smallcaps

The title field in Zotero will show your HTML tags. But when you create a bibliography from either within Zotero or while writing a document in Word, your citations will appear with italics, bold, sub-, or superscripts, etc.

For example, the citation will look like this in Zotero:

Engineering the biological conversion of CH₃OH to specialty chemicals in <i>Escherichia coli</i>

But will look like this in your bibliography:

Engineering the biological conversion of CH₃OH to specialty chemicals in Escherichia coli

2. Add rich text formatting by copy and pasting Unicode UTF-8 symbols into the title field as needed.

Here are a few good places online to copy from:

• Character Entity Reference Chart

• List of Common Astronomy Symbols

• Math Operators

• Superscripts and Subscripts

• Letter Character Superscripts and Subscripts

And here is a series of commonly used symbols to cut from:

∝ 〈 〉 ⊗ ° ± ≠ ≃ ≈ ≡ ∝ √ ≤ ≥ ≳ ≾ « » → ← ⇌ ∞ • • À Á Å Ã Ä Â å á à ã ä â ā ă ą æ ∠ α β Ć Č ć č ç χ © đ ∂ Δ δ É é è ë ê ě ę ε η ğ Γ γ ℏ ℋ ℋ ∞ Î İ í î ï ī ĭ ∫ κ ℒ ℓ Ł ł Λ λ µ ñ ń ň ν Ö Ó Ø ö ó ò ô ő ō ø Ω ω ø Φ φ Π π £ Ψ ℝ ř ρ Š Ś Ş š ş § Σ σ ß Ţ ț τ θ Ü Ú ü ú ẋ Ý Ÿ ý ÿ × ξ Ž Ż ž ż ź ζ ♀ ♂ ⊙ ★ ⊕

3. Add rich text formatting by using the 'Emoji & Symbols' feature on a Mac or the 'Character Map' on a PC.

   1. From within Zotero on a Mac

      1. Make sure that your cursor is placed in the title field where you want to insert a new character

      2. Go to Edit > Emoji & Symbols which opens 'Character Viewer.'

      3. Locate the symbol, sub- or superscript you want, double click and it will be added to your title field.

      4. type a number into the search bar and a selection of 'Related Characters' will appear in bottom, right portion of the window (if you want to find sub- or superscripts quickly).

   2. On a PC

      1. Open 'Character Map' by either using your computer's search function or going to your System Tools folder.

      2. Select a Unicode font (e.g Lucida Sans Unicode).

      3. Scroll to find the character you want to insert and double click on it to add it to the 'Characters to copy' field.

      4. Click on the copy button and then CTRL-V to paste the character into the title or highlight the character the 'Characters to copy' field, use CTRL-C to copy, and then use CTRL-V to paste the character into the title.

Part or all of this answer is adapted from Zotero wiki content distributed under various Creative Commons licenses found at zotero.org/support/licensing. Additional content may have been adapted from the Zotero LibGuide by Jason Puckett and licensed by Georgia State University Library under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License.