[Tex/LaTex] Is it possible to italicize journal names and book titles through the .bst file

bibtexformattingitalicnatbib

I am working on an article for a Springer journal, and the specifications for manuscripts clearly ask to italicize all journal names and book titles. Doing it manually feels stupid, so I wonder if there's a way to make the BibTeX style do the trick for me. I am currently using spbasic.bst (natbib compatible stuff), and I have no experience in the obscure .bst language. Any hints?

Best Answer

As you say, the BibTeX stack language is a bit tricky. Here, we need to alter two functions. In a renamed copy of spbasic.bst, you first want to make journal names italic by altering FUNCTION {article}. It contains the lines

journal
remove.dots

which need so be altered to

journal
remove.dots
"\emph{" swap$ * "}" *

To alter book titles, changes are needed to FUNCTION {format.btitle}, which is short so I'll reproduce in full

FUNCTION {format.btitle}
  { 
    title "title" bibinfo.check
    duplicate$ empty$ 
      'skip$
      {
       "\emph{" swap$ * "}" * 
      }
     if$
}

In both cases, we are working with a stack containing 'the thing to be made italic'. First, I've added \emph{ to the stack, then used swap$ to put the thing after \emph{ on the stack. The * concatenates the two, then I add } to the stack and concatenate again.

Fancy hacking

I think the simpler solution is just to hack you bst file. So, for example look in the apalike2.bst file for

FUNCTION {format.authors}
{ author empty$
    { "" }
    { author format.names }
  if$
}

and add smallcaps before format.names so that it looks like

{ author smallcaps format.names }

Here I added the smallcaps function near FUNCTION {emphasize}, and it is defined as

FUNCTION {smallcaps}
{ duplicate$ empty$
    { pop$ "" }
    { "{\sc " swap$ * "}" * }
  if$
}

The result is shown below:

enter image description here

It works with apa.bst too, as shown below:

enter image description here

Using makebst

Otherwise, you can use makebst, and generate your own format, e.g.

$ latex makebst

will ask you a series of questions about the format of your bibliography, including typeface about authors:

TYPEFACE FOR AUTHORS IN LIST OF REFERENCES:
(*) Normal font for author names 
(s) Small caps authors (\sc)
(i) Italic authors (\it or \em)
(b) Bold authors (\bf)
(u) User defined author font (\bibnamefont)
  Select:

\ans=s
  You have selected: Small caps authors

When the above steps are completed, you can just run latex on the filename you gave, and you'll have your bst file. Below is the result. (I accepted all default choices, so you may have to tweak it to fit the APA style.)

enter image description here

[Tex/LaTex] Help with editing .bst file to output article titles in the bibliography

You will need to edit the article function in apj.bst and provide an instruction to print the contents of the entry's title field. I suggest you do so as follows:

Make a copy of the file apj.bst; call the copy, say, myapj.bst.
Open the file myapj.bst in a text editor and search for the function called article. I believe it starts right after the line that says %%%%%%% End of functions from astrobib.
In the function article, locate the lines
```
  date.block
  crossref missing$
```
Insert the line
```
  format.title "title" output.check
```
between these two lines.
Save the file myapj.bst, either in the directory where your main .tex file is located or in a directory that's searched by BibTeX. If you choose the latter method, you should also update the TeX distribution's filename database.
Start using the new bibliography style with the instruction \bibliographystyle{myapj}. When switching from one bibliography style to another, it's important to run latex, bibtex, and latex twice more so that all changes are fully propagated.

If you're interested in learning more about the BibTeX infix syntax, I heartily recommend you read the document Tame the BeaST -- The B to X of BibTeX by Nicolas Markey.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Upper case author names for BST file (based on APA)

Fancy hacking

Using makebst

[Tex/LaTex] Help with editing .bst file to output article titles in the bibliography

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