[Tex/LaTex] Removing Line Breaks in Bibliography compiled with Biblatex

biblatexline-breaking

I have a strict page limit on a paper I'm writing, and the page limit includes citations, so to save space I would like to remove the line breaks between entries in my bibliography:

[1] Dr. Seuss. *Horton Hears a Who!* Random House, 1954. [2] J. Lennon. *In His Own Write*.  Macmillan & Scribner, 1964. [3] L. Carroll. *Alice's Adventures in Wonderland*. Macmillan, 1864.

instead of

[1] Dr. Seuss. *Horton Hears a Who!* Random House, 1954.
[2] J. Lennon. *In His Own Write*.  Macmillan & Scribner, 1964.
[3] L. Carroll. *Alice's Adventures in Wonderland*. Macmillan, 1864.

At the moment, the biblatex commands I'm using are

\usepackage[firstinits=true,backend=bibtex,doi=false,isbn=false,url=false]{biblatex}
\AtEveryBibitem{%
  \clearfield{pages}%
}
\renewcommand{\bibfont}{\normalfont\footnotesize}
\addbibresource{bib.bib}
\begin{document}
\end{document}

\nocite{*}
\begingroup
\setlength\bibitemsep{0pt}
\setlength\bibnamesep{0pt}
\printbibliography[heading=none]
\endgroup

which I think explains why I want to use Biblatex instead of the paralist solution I've seen (and that I could not get to work with Biblatex).

EDIT I: Here are two screen shots showing the spacing differences.

No line break:
No Line Break
With line break:
With Line Break

Edit II:

Solved with

\usepackage{setspace}
...
\begin{spacing}{.5}
\printbibliography
\end{spacing}

Best Answer

You might want to try the following modification of the bibliography environment.

The bibliography will be printed unindented (\noindent), the \unspace removes the last space added in the bibliography, the \printtext part adds the label number followed by a space.

\defbibenvironment{bibliography}
  {\noindent}% or {} if you like indentation
  {\unspace}
  {\printtext[labelnumberwidth]{%
     \printfield{labelprefix}%
     \printfield{labelnumber}}%
   \addspace}

If you use this, however, there will be no space before the label, we can add it by

\renewbibmacro*{finentry}{\finentry\addspace}

The MWE

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[firstinits=true,backend=bibtex,doi=false,isbn=false,url=false]{biblatex}
\AtEveryBibitem{%
  \clearfield{pages}%
}
\renewcommand{\bibfont}{\normalfont\footnotesize}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\defbibenvironment{bibliography}
  {\noindent}
  {\unspace}
  {\printtext[labelnumberwidth]{%
     \printfield{labelprefix}%
     \printfield{labelnumber}}%
   \addspace}
\renewbibmacro*{finentry}{\finentry\addspace}

\begin{document}
  \cite{wilde,shore,springer}

  \printbibliography[heading=none]
\end{document}

yields enter image description here


As you can see, this is not very clear and well arranged, so I would advise against doing this - especially in long bibliography lists.


Following jon's suggestion in the comment below, this might be better. We add more space between the entries (a \quad) and print the label in bold.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage[firstinits=true,backend=bibtex,doi=false,isbn=false,url=false]{biblatex}
\AtEveryBibitem{%
  \clearfield{pages}%
}
\renewcommand{\bibfont}{\normalfont\footnotesize}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\defbibenvironment{bibliography}
  {\noindent}
  {\unspace}
  {\printtext[bold]{%
     \printtext[labelnumberwidth]{%
       \printfield{labelprefix}%
       \printfield{labelnumber}}}%
   \addspace}
\renewbibmacro*{finentry}{\finentry\quad}

\begin{document}
  \cite{wilde,shore,springer}

  \printbibliography[heading=none]
\end{document}

enter image description here