[Tex/LaTex] Citation of short titles

biblatex

I am using biblatex for my citations and bibliography, with citations placed in end notes and am using the authortitle style. I am required to cite a single work in the notes with just a reference to the author, but if that author has multiple works in the bibliography, I need to use the the combination of author and short title in the citation.

For example:

Smith, p.10.
Jones, "Gone with the Wind", p.11.
Smith, p.23.
Jones, "No longer windy", p.2.
etc

I have successfully implemented the Jones, "Gone with the Wind", p.11 type of entry, but I get this format for all my entries, including those for Smith. How do I drop the short title from the Smith-type entries, that is, those authors with only single titles in the bibliography?

Thanks for any assistance.

The following code shows my biblatex setup:

\documentclass[11pt, article, oneside]{memoir}
\usepackage{endnotes}
\let\footnote=\endnote
\renewcommand{\notesname}{}
\usepackage[citestyle=authortitle-ibid, bibstyle=authortitle, sorting=nyt, 
block=space, terseinits=true, backend=biber]{biblatex}
\defbibheading{memoir}{}
\bibliography{/Volumes/Current/work/core/biblio14}
\DefineBibliographyStrings{australian}{% 
bibliography = {References},
shorthands = {Abbreviations}, 
editor = {editor}, 
editors = {editors},
techreport = {},
in = {~}, 
}

\newbibmacro*{shorttitle}{%
  \setunit*{\addcomma\space}%
  \printlist{shorttitle}%
  \setunit*{\addcomma\space}
  \newunit}

\begin{document}

blah blah blah \footnote{\cite[247]{Kaufmann2014b}}
blah blah blah


\newpage
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Notes}
\chapter*{Notes}
% 
\begingroup
\renewcommand{\makeenmark}{\hbox{\theenmark}.\quad}
\parindent 0pt
\parskip 2ex
\def\enotesize{\normalsize}
\theendnotes
\endgroup

\chapter*{References}
\raggedright
\printbibliography[heading=memoir]

\end{document}

Best Answer

If we enable the package option singletitle we can use the test \ifsingletitle to check if there is only one work by a particular author.

We can modify the cite:title macro to do nothing if that is the case

\renewbibmacro*{cite:title}{%
  \ifsingletitle
    {}
    {\printtext[bibhyperref]{%
       \printfield[citetitle]{labeltitle}}}}

This, leads to a tiny complication with punctuation though, so we also need

\renewbibmacro*{cite}{%
  \global\boolfalse{cbx:loccit}%
  \iffieldundef{shorthand}
    {\ifthenelse{\ifciteibid\AND\NOT\iffirstonpage}
       {\usebibmacro{cite:ibid}}
       {\ifnameundef{labelname}
          {}
          {\printnames{labelname}%
           \ifsingletitle{}{\setunit{\nametitledelim}}}%<--- the change is here
        \usebibmacro{cite:title}}}%
    {\usebibmacro{cite:shorthand}}}

Note that in your MWE I have changed your redefinition of the in bibstring to the standard way to suppress the "in:", I also use style=authortitle-ibid instead of the longer, but equivalent citestyle=authortitle-ibid, bibstyle=authortitle. I don't like the techreport = {}, either, but I'm not entirely sure what you want to do there, so I left it, maybe, just maybe \AtEveryBibitem{\clearfield{type}} does what you want. We also used \footcite{foo} instead of \footnote{\cite{foo}}.

\documentclass[11pt, article, oneside]{memoir}
\usepackage[australian]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage{endnotes}
\let\footnote=\endnote
\renewcommand{\notesname}{}
\usepackage[style=authortitle-ibid, terseinits=true, block=space, backend=biber, singletitle]{biblatex}
\defbibheading{memoir}{}

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\DefineBibliographyStrings{australian}{% 
bibliography = {References},
shorthands = {Abbreviations}, 
editor = {editor}, 
editors = {editors},
techreport = {},
}

\renewbibmacro{in:}{}

\renewbibmacro*{cite}{%
  \global\boolfalse{cbx:loccit}%
  \iffieldundef{shorthand}
    {\ifthenelse{\ifciteibid\AND\NOT\iffirstonpage}
       {\usebibmacro{cite:ibid}}
       {\ifnameundef{labelname}
          {}
          {\printnames{labelname}%
           \ifsingletitle{}{\setunit{\nametitledelim}}}%
        \usebibmacro{cite:title}}}%
    {\usebibmacro{cite:shorthand}}}

\renewbibmacro*{cite:title}{%
  \ifsingletitle
    {}
    {\printtext[bibhyperref]{%
       \printfield[citetitle]{labeltitle}}}}


\begin{document}

blah\footcite[12]{sigfridsson} blah\footcite{worman,pines} blah\footcite[34]{knuth:ct:b}
blah\footcite[56]{geer} blah\footcite[78]{knuth:ct:c} blah.


\newpage
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Notes}
\chapter*{Notes}
% 
\begingroup
\renewcommand{\makeenmark}{\hbox{\theenmark}.\quad}
\parindent 0pt
\parskip 2ex
\def\enotesize{\normalsize}
\theendnotes
\endgroup

\chapter*{References}
\raggedright
\printbibliography[heading=memoir]

\end{document}

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Proper casing in citation/bibliography titles using biblatex/Biber

It might depend on the style and language(s) you are using, but generally titles are printed in the field format titlecase. By default, titlecase has no effect on casing; from biblatex.def:

\DeclareFieldFormat{titlecase}{#1}

If you want all titles in sentence case (i.e. first letter capitalized, the rest in lowercase) you can redefine this format:

\DeclareFieldFormat{titlecase}{\MakeSentenceCase*{#1}}

The \MakeSentenceCase* command converts its argument to sentence case, except for text enclosed in braces ({}). It also generally has no effect on control sequences. However Latin characters in math ( $...$ or $...$) are affected and control sequences in $...$ generate parsing errors. To avoid these issues all math can be wrapped in braces. Wrapping a single character in braces affects its kerning, so the biblatex manual recommends wrapping braces around entire words. For example:

title = {An Introduction to {LaTeX}}

instead of:

title = {An Introduction to {L}a{T}e{X}}

You can make casing depend on the entry type(s) by adding an optional argument - for example:

\DeclareFieldFormat[article]{titlecase}{\MakeSentenceCase*{#1}}

One catch here is that the titlecase format is rolled out to all titles within an entry type. So in the above example both the title and journaltitle fields would be printed in sentence case. This question addresses how to make title case depend on both the entry and field types.

\DeclareCaseLangs specifies all the languages that the starred version \MakeSentenceCase* converts to sentence case. By default we have:

\DeclareCaseLangs{%     
  american,british,canadian,english,australian,newzealand,USenglish,UKenglish}

For further details, see biblatex documentation on the above commands and release notes under the heading "Sentence case vs. title case".

edit by @moewe: The biblatex documentation recommends the starred version \MakeSentenceCase* over the unstarred \MakeSentenceCase.

The starred version \MakeSentenceCase* only applies sentence casing of the language of the entry (as given in the langid field or if it is empty, the surrounding language) is in the list of languages where sentence casing makes sense (as defined by \DeclareCaseLangs).

\MakeSentenceCase applies sentence casing regardless of the language settings and may result in unwanted capitalisation changes in non-English contexts (German for example has no notion of Title Case vs sentence case and English sentence casing as implemented in \MakeSentenceCase would lead violate the rules of orthography).

[Tex/LaTex] Short harvard citation

This is the standard with biblatex’s style alphabetic, as long as you have one author. With multiple authors, this style takes the first letter of every author – up to three, as a default. If there are more than three authors, it takes the first three letters of the first name, then a + and the year, e.g.

Kemper 2009 > [Kem09]

Goossens, Mittelbach and Samarin 1994 > [GSM94]

Kemper et al. 2011 > [Kem+11]

Edit:

As Audrey stated in the comments, you can change the name of the authors that are used for the alphabetic label with the option maxalphanames. With maxalphanames=1, the above examples would look like this:

Kemper 2009 > [Kem09]

Goossens, Mittelbach and Samarin 1994 > [Goo+94]

Kemper et al. 2011 > [Kem+11]

If you want to get rid of the +, you can redefine the \labelalphaothers command: \renewcommand*{\labelalphaothers}{}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Proper casing in citation/bibliography titles using biblatex/Biber

[Tex/LaTex] Short harvard citation

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