[Tex/LaTex] Punctuation in bibliography with multiple languages

babelbiblatexbibliographieslanguagespunctuation

In a document written in a given language (in my case French but it may not matter so much) I have a bibliography mixing entries in different languages (in this case French, English and German). I would like to get the punctuation (basically quotation marks and spacing before double punctuation or question marks) right for each entry.

In this simple example:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[british,french]{babel}
\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{A2012,
author = {Author, A},
title = {A ``paper'': written in english?},
journal = {Journal},
year = {2012},
volume = {2},
pages = {70--76},
}
@article{B2012,
author = {Auteur, B},
title = {Un \og article\fg : \'ecrit en fran\c{c}ais ?},
journal = {Journal},
year = {2012},
volume = {2},
pages = {77--79},
}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}

\cite{A2012}, \cite{B2012}

\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{\jobname}

\end{document}

I obtain

enter image description here

babel has added spacing before the colon and question mark for the english entry. One way to avoid that is to add \NoAutoSpaceBeforeFDP in the preamble. But then the space before the colon is eaten up by babel also in the french entry. I can make sure this does not happen by putting manually an unbreakable space in
the bibliographic entry. However, this seems like an inconvenient hack to me.

Is there a systematic way to make sure that the spacing is correct in each entry? (and if possible, to obtain the correct quotation marks without entering them manually as I have done in the example?)

Best Answer

This is yet another reason to switch to biblatex (here: in combination with csquotes). (And with biblatex-trad there's even a trad-plain style!)

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[british,french]{babel}
\usepackage[french=guillemets]{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=trad-plain,babel=other]{biblatex}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{A2012,
hyphenation = {british},
author = {Author, A},
title = {A \enquote{paper}: written in english?},
journal = {Journal},
year = {2012},
volume = {2},
pages = {70--76},
}
@article{B2012,
hyphenation = {french},
author = {Auteur, B},
title = {Un \enquote{article}: \'ecrit en fran\c{c}ais?},
journal = {Journal},
year = {2012},
volume = {2},
pages = {77--79},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}

\cite{A2012}, \cite{B2012}

\printbibliography

\end{document}

enter image description here

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] The punctuation signs; comma and dot, below footnote indicator is beautiful in the context of typographic styles

Just stick to the norm that applies.

It is irrelevant if one prefers one way more than the other. Provided that one knows the norm of the language in which the text is to be written, one must just follow it.

[Tex/LaTex] Citing (author, journalabbr., year) needed

First thing to do is to add a field for the journal abbreviation to the article entrytype, journalabbr in the MWE. Therefore you need to declare a datamodel (an extra file; in the MWE I've used filecontents to simulate that) and you have to tell biblatex/biber to use it in the package options.

Then you have to modify the cite command, so it fits your needs. \citep from the authoryear-style (your citestyle) uses the \cite command. There you just have to add a switch, which checks if the field journalabbr is empty or not, and prints it out or not.

Last but not least you have to add the abbreviation fields to the entries.

MWE:

\begin{filecontents}{min.bib}
@article{boisson2003unexpected,
  title={Unexpected protein families including cell defense components feature in the N-myristoylome of a higher eukaryote},
  author={Boisson, B. and Giglione, Carmela and Meinnel, Thierry},
  journal={Journal of Biological Chemistry},
  journalabbr={JBC},
  year={2003},
  publisher={ASBMB}
}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{authorjabbryear.dbx}
\ProvidesFile{authorjabbryear.dbx}
\DeclareDatamodelFields[type=field,datatype=literal]{journalabbr}
\DeclareDatamodelEntryfields[article]{journalabbr}
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass[fontsize=11pt, paper=a4, ngerman, DIV=calc]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[scaled]{helvet}
\renewcommand*\familydefault{\sfdefault}
\usepackage{fixltx2e}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage[german=quotes]{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=authoryear-comp,sortcites=true,sorting=nyt,isbn=false,natbib=true, citestyle=authoryear,bibstyle=authoryear,backend=biber,maxnames=1,maxcitenames=1,
,datamodel=authorjabbryear%added!
] {biblatex}

\DefineBibliographyStrings{ngerman}{ andothers = {{et\,al\adddot}} }

\renewbibmacro*{cite}{%from authoryear.cbx
  \iffieldundef{shorthand}
    {\ifthenelse{\ifnameundef{labelname}\OR\iffieldundef{labelyear}}
       {\usebibmacro{cite:label}%
        \setunit{\addspace}}
       {\printnames{labelname}%
        \setunit{\nameyeardelim}}%
     \iffieldundef{journalabbr}{}{%
        \printfield{journalabbr}%
        \setunit{\nameyeardelim}%
        }%
     \usebibmacro{cite:labelyear+extrayear}}
    {\usebibmacro{cite:shorthand}}}

\addbibresource{min.bib}

\begin{document}

\citep{boisson2003unexpected} 

How it should look like: 

(Boisson et al., JBC, 2003)

\printbibliography

\end{document}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] The punctuation signs; comma and dot, below footnote indicator is beautiful in the context of typographic styles

[Tex/LaTex] Citing (author, journalabbr., year) needed

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