Apacite: Different author name in textcite and bibliography

Question

Just to preface, I'm rather new to LaTeX and even newer to using .bib files to go along with them, but I think I got the basic idea. I'm using MikTeX and TeXMaker on my laptop.

I'd like to cite 3Blue1Brown's YouTube video on the Monster Group. APA style demands that I put his username after his real name in brackets, like so: Sanderson, Grant [3Blue1Brown]…

However, I can't seem to do that with apacite. Here's what I have so far in the .bib file:

@misc{3b1bvideo,
    type = {Video},
    author = {Grant Sanderson},
    year = {2020},
    month = {August},
    day = {19},
    title = {Group theory, abstraction, and the 196,883-dimensional monster},
    howpublished = {YouTube},
    url = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH0oCDa74tE}
}

That works really well. It has all the required elements except for the username.

I can get the username in the reference list like this:

@misc{3b1bvideo,
    type = {Video},
    author = "{Sanderson, G. [3Blue1Brown]}",
    year = {2020},
    month = {August},
    day = {19},
    title = {Group theory, abstraction, and the 196,883-dimensional monster},
    howpublished = {YouTube},
    url = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH0oCDa74tE}
}

…but then it ruins the in-text citations.

Is there any possible way to put his username in the reference list without ruining the in-text citations? I'd be okay with modifying the .bst files and/or running some \renewcommand lines, so long as they don't mess up the other reference items.

Answer 1

As far as I can see apacite has no field or other standard way of giving user names.

Here is a hacky way to get the desired output that exploits how BibTeX generates initials.

\documentclass[american]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{babel}

\usepackage{apacite}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@misc{3b1bvideo,
  type         = {Video},
  author       = {Sanderson, {\relax G. [3Blue1Brown]}},
  year         = {2020},
  month        = {August},
  day          = {19},
  title        = {Group theory, abstraction, and the 196,883-dimensional monster},
  howpublished = {YouTube},
  url          = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH0oCDa74tE}
}
\end{filecontents}


\begin{document}
Lorem \cite{3b1bvideo}

\bibliographystyle{apacite}
\bibliography{\jobname}
\end{document}

Note that apacite implements 6th edition APA style (from the 2009 manual). The current 7th edition of the APA manual was published in 2019 and bibliography and citation style differ in some aspects quite significantly from the 6th edition.

If you need 7th-edition APA style, the only LaTeX implementation that I know of is biblatex-apa's style=apa, for biblatex. Note that if you want to switch to biblatex you need to compile your document with Biber instead of BibTeX (Biblatex with Biber: Configuring my editor to avoid undefined citations can help with that). It might also be instructive to have a look at bibtex vs. biber and biblatex vs. natbib and What to do to switch to biblatex? if you are not familiar with biblatex.

biblatex-apa uses field annotations to specify the user name

\documentclass[american]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}

\usepackage[backend=biber, style=apa]{biblatex}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@video{3b1bvideo,
  entrysubtype       = {video},
  author             = {Sanderson, G},
  author+an:username = {1="3Blue1Brown"},
  title              = {Group theory, abstraction, and the 196,883-dimensional monster},
  publisher          = {YouTube},
  date               = {2020-08-19},
  url                = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH0oCDa74tE}
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
Lorem \autocite{sigfridsson,3b1bvideo}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

There is a difference in otuput here between apacite and biblatex-apa. But as far as I can see from https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/youtube-references the output produced by biblatex-apa is indeed what 7th edition APA style wants.