[Tex/LaTex] BibTex – Authors with just one name: unwanted comma after name

bibliographiesbibtex

I need a very special style for my university so I created a first draft with JabRef and edited the .bst file created by JabRef to better suit my requirements.

My main problem was, that I have many authors with just one Name (say just "Google", as it was an official document from them with no person as author specified). When adding them as the "Author" in my BibTex file, the bibliography would look like this:

    author = {Google},

Google, (2014): …

basically expecting a first name, which wasn't given as seen above. I want to comma gone if there is just one name – or even better, mark the whole thing as do not touch, like:

author = { \donttouch{Google}}

Google (2014): …

Do you know if there is an easy way to work around that issue (the extra comma)? I tried an alternative custom author field which basically worked, but had the disadvantage that sorting of the bibliography was pretty messed up.

Edit: Here an MWE:

\documentclass[11pt,oneside,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[onehalfspacing]{setspace}
\usepackage{float}

\usepackage[left=4cm,right=2cm,top=2.5cm,bottom=2.5cm,includeheadfoot]{geometry}

\renewcommand\refname{Quellenverzeichnis}
\renewcommand{\figurename}{Abbildung}
\renewcommand{\contentsname}{Inhaltsverzeichnis}
\renewcommand\listfigurename{Abbildungsverzeichnis}

\title{mytitle}
\date{June 19}

\pagenumbering{Roman} 
\begin{document}

\clearpage\maketitle
\thispagestyle{empty}

\onehalfspacing


\newpage
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Quellenverzeichnis}
\bibliographystyle{fom}
\bibliography{quellen}
\end{document}

Also, I uploaded my current .bst file in case you want to take a look at it: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13587475/fom.bst

One entry in my .bib file that doesn't work as inteded would be for example (the yeara is a custom field which I need to display it nicely):

@misc{abiSmart,
    author = {ABIresearch},
    title = {Q1 2014 Wearable Shipments: Activity Trackers Outsold Smartwatches by 4 to 1 },
    yeara = {2014},
    year = {17.06.2014},
    url = {https://www.abiresearch.com/press/q1-2014-wearable-shipments-activity-trackers-outso}
}

Best Answer

The cause of the problem is a faulty instruction in the bst file. Make a copy of fom.bst and edit the copy as follows:

  • in the function format.names.author, find the string

    "{vv}{ll, }{f.}"

    and replace it with

    "{vv~}{ll}{, f.}"

    That way, a comma will be inserted after the last-name component only if the author's name contains a first-name component as well.

    Note that, in addition to moving the location of the comma to the first-name component of the (full) name, I also recommend making the space between the von and last-name components non-breakable.

  • Repeat this edit for the second occurrence of the string "{vv}{ll, }{f.}" in the function format.names.author and for the two occurrences of this string in the function format.name.editors.

  • Save the modified bst file, update you TeX distribution's filename database if the new bst file isn't placed in the same directory as your main .tex file, and recompile your document from scratch.

Addendum: I can't help but voice my surprise and dismay over the fact that the fom bibliography style doesn't provide a mechanism for dealing with authors' "junior" name components (which can be Sr., Jr., III, the Elder, the Younger, and so on). You may luck out, in the sense that your bibliographic entries don't contain authors whose names contain such "junior" components. Nevertheless, it seems to be quite unsatisfactory for a bibliography style not to provide such a mechanism at all.

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