Zotero uses Citation Style Language (CSL) to properly format citations in many different bibliographic styles. Zotero supports all the major styles (Chicago, MLA, APA, etc.) as well as the specific styles for over 8,000 journals and publishers.
Zotero's Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs plugins allow users to insert citations directly from their word processing software. This makes citing multiple pages or sources or otherwise customizing citations a breeze. In-text citations, footnotes and endnotes are all supported. With community-developed plugins, Zotero can also be used with LaTeX, Scrivener, and numerous other writing programs.
Using the word processor plugins makes it possible to automatically generate a bibliography from the items cited and to switch citation styles for the entire document with the click of a button.
You can begin citing with Zotero by clicking the “Add/Edit Citation” button. Pressing the button brings up the citation dialog. The citation dialog is used to select items from your Zotero library, and create a citation. Start typing part of a title, the last names of one or more authors, and/or a year in the dialog box. Matching items will instantly appear below the dialog box. Matching items will be shown for each library in your Zotero database (My Library and any groups you are part of). Items you have already cited in the document will be shown at the top of the list under “Cited”. Select an item by clicking on it or by pressing Enter/Return when it is highlighted. The item will appear in the dialog box in a shaded bubble. Press Enter/Return again to insert the citation and close the Add Citation box. In the Add Citation dialog box, you can click on the bubble for a cited item, then click “Open in My Library (or the Group Library's name)” to view the item in Zotero. Items that are orphaned (not connected to any items in your Zotero database) will not have an “Open in My Library” button. Orphaned items can exist if they were inserted by a collaborator from their My Library or a group you don't have access to or if you they were deleted from your Zotero library.
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) to open the citation dialog box. Then, click on the citation again to open the cite options window to customize your citations (demonstrated below). 
If you want to write a sentence that only includes the year of the citation because you have used the author's name previously in the sentence, you may do so by checking the box next to "Suppress Author."
To use the write and cite function of Zotero, you first need to make sure you have the Word Processor plugin installed. The Zotero word processor plugins are bundled with Zotero and should be installed automatically for each supported word processor on your computer when you first start Zotero.
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)This icon is used to open a Document Preferences window, which allows you to update the following preferences:
The citation style.
The language used to format citations and bibliographies.
For note-based styles (e.g., “Chicago Manual of Style (Note)”), whether citations are inserted in footnotes or endnotes.
Note that Word, not Zotero, controls the style and format of footnotes and endnotes.
Whether to store citations as Fields or Bookmarks.
Unless you need to collaborate with colleagues using LibreOffice, you should always choose Fields.
For styles that abbreviate journal titles, whether to use the MEDLINE abbreviations list to abbreviate titles.
If this option is selected (the default), the contents of the “Journal Abbr” field in Zotero will be ignored.
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). Either of these options will pull up the same pop-up window that displays for the Zotero Word Plugin.
Open the document preferences menu to edit the following preferences:
The citation style.
The language to use to format citations and bibliography.
For styles that abbreviate journal titles (e.g., “Nature”), whether to use the MEDLINE abbreviations list to abbreviate titles.
If this option is selected (the default), the contents of the “Journal Abbr” field in Zotero will be ignored.
Whether Zotero should automatically update citations for disambiguations, ibid, and numbering, or whether updating should be delayed until a manual refresh. Note that if you enable this mode, Zotero will insert your citations with a gray background to indicate that the citation text is not final. The citation will be finalized and the gray background removed once you click “Refresh” in the Zotero menu.