I've been making the switch toward using biblatex-chicago
to replace an old .bst
(now out-dated), but I'm still confused as to how biblatex
handles short-forms and abbreviations. For example, when I cite an article from the journal Vetus Testamentum, I want the footnote to use the abbreviation VT, but the bibliography to use the full form. In my old .bst
file I used the .bib field shortjournal
, but that doesn't seem to be the way biblatex
works. Similarly, I would like to be able to abbreviate commonly cited reference works, e.g. Ancient Near Eastern Texts as ANET in my footnotes, and use it's full form in the bibliography.
I'm guessing that this functionality is built into biblatex
, I just don't know how to use it.
Best Answer
There are a few different fields you can use:
shorthand
: Replaces the entire citation label. In verbose/"notes" styles, this abbreviation is used after the first citation.shorttitle
: Replacestitle
if it appears in the citation label. In verbose/"notes" styles, this abbreviation is used after the first citation.shortjournal
: Defined in the default data model, but not used in the standard styles orbiblatex-chicago
.To incorporate
shortjournal
in the standard styles, you can modify thejournal
bibliography macro frombiblatex.def
in your preamble:The
biblatex-chicago
styles have been tailored to meet the requirements of CMS. They are much more complicated than the standard styles and therefore difficult to modify. The following edit for thejournal+sub
macro from any one of the package'scbx
files should work for most cases: