[Tex/LaTex] BibTeX and in-text citations

bibliographiesbibtexnatbib

I am starting with LaTeX and now I have a problem. I am writing a long document (thesis) and I have a specific LaTeX template which uses the BibTeX package to manage bibliography (as soon as I understand the code). In the past I used to use the natbib package which helps a lot when trying to insert in-text citations.

Now I cannot figure out how to implement the natbib in the main file. How can I 'force' the BibTeX pack to get in-text citations like:

LaTeX is difficult (Guy et al., 2016).

Best Answer

That template does some funny things. It gives you many options, which as well means many limitations.

For example, you can add an option biblatex as class option to use the modern package, but \bibliography doesn't work anymore, because the macro is redefined. The make script does not run biber even though specified.

If you decide to do the classical way, you can change the \bibstyle (yes, it is called that way). As soon as you load package natbib, the bibstyle is set to plain and can't be changed.

Having said that, i think this question arises from a template bug and should be closed.

To address the little comment in the question: LaTeX is not difficult if you are using the standard. Every template, that defines own commands and macros means extra confusion and more stuff to handle for a starter.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Citations with no date, e.g. (Aristotle n.d.)

The function calc.label in apalike.bst is responsible of this: it strips away all non alphanumeric characters and keeps the last up to four characters remaining.

If you copy apalike.bst to myapalike.bst and change the function defined in lines 896-912 to become

FUNCTION {calc.label}
{ type$ "book" =
  type$ "inbook" =
  or
    'author.editor.key.label
    { type$ "proceedings" =
        'editor.key.label                       % apalike ignores organization
        'author.key.label                       % for labeling and sorting
      if$
    }
  if$
  ", "                                                  % these three lines are
  *                                                     % for apalike, which
  year field.or.null #-1 #4 substring$          % uses all four digits
  *
  'label :=
}

then \bibliographystyle{myapalike} will accept year={n.d.} as you wish: it consists of four characters, after all!

The change consists simply in removing the string purify$. I can't say if this may have adverse effects on other entries; but, as long as you have only years or n.d., all should go well.

[Tex/LaTex] bibtex file does not recognize the citations

You haven't told us which bibliography style you use, but it would appear to be one that generates a numeric citation style by default.

If the bibliography style is not completely incompatible with authoryear-style citations (a big if, given the first error message you report...), you could try issuing the command

\setcitestyle{authoryear}

after loading natbib so that \citet and \citep can create citations in the desired authoryear style. After adding the command given above, be sure to wipe out the .aux file and rerun LaTeX, BibTeX, and LaTeX (twice more) .

If your bibliography style does turn out to be incompatible with authoryear-style citations, you either need to find another, compatible style file or create your own custom .bst style file from scratch. Fortunately, the latter method isn't as difficult as it might seem, thanks to the existence of the custom-bib package (which was created, incidentally, by the author of the natbib package).

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Citations with no date, e.g. (Aristotle n.d.)

[Tex/LaTex] bibtex file does not recognize the citations

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