# Standardize on List Items

This function's purpose is to standardize the representation of items in fields which are associated with preference lists. List items may differ in alphabetic case and by the inclusion or exclusion of leading articles. If a field contains multiple items separated by the Multi Value Delimiter, each value will be processed individually. If a specified field is not associated with a list, nothing will be modified.

Fields can be specified in a table or in a named variable.

When the fields are specified in a named variable, the content of the unescaped named variable is interpreted as a list of symbolic field names. The list can be delimited by default list delimiters (\~), newline characters (\n) and commas. Items which do not represent field names are ignored. The list of valid fields are processed exactly as if they were specified in the table. This effectively provides a means of specifying which fields are to be processed at runtime.

Each value in a field will be compared against a possible value in its associated list. If the item is found to be in the list with a different alphabetic case than the current value, the current value will be changed.

This statement's behaviour can be modified by the Advanced List Settings.

This functionality can be performed automatically when typing in a field. You can enable the auto-standardization functionality by setting the Standardize on list items when typing setting in Advanced List Settings which is accessed in Preferences-Lists or Preferences-Credit Editor.

Note that lists can be standardized for built in items and for custom fields. All custom fields are listed. The determination is made at runtime as to whether a custom field is associated with a list.