Mmmmm ... the plot thickens.
I tried your suggestion, and it appeared to work flawless for the titles I tested (one had a truncated name). At least, it did so on this machine (Win 7 Netbook) with its current version of calibre.
I know I checked out all the available options at one point, and certainly did not want to create a script unless I felt I had to.
So either I have forgotten the reason or it is something relevant to my other PC (Win XP Laptop), which I don't have access to right now. Could be as simple as an old version of calibre ... if so then I am truly embarrassed, and I should have checked some aspect of that first before posting, though I just took advantage of a spare moment that popped up, to do my query. Pretty sure I downloaded an update for calibre to transfer to that PC a while back, but maybe I forgot to install it.