[Tex/LaTex] Shortening Reference

Question

I want to reference

[Was97] L. Washington, Introduction to cyclotomic fields, Springer, New York, 1997.

in my text. However, using Bibdesk, it autogenerates Was97 for me. How may I change that to [W97] or in fact, to anything else?

Answer 1

The code you provided is your bib-File, but I assume, that you are using bibtex as told.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
  @book{washington,
      Address = {New York},
        Author = {Washington, L.},
        Publisher = {Springer},
        Title = {Introduction to cyclotomic fields},
        Year = {1997},
        }
\end{filecontents*}
\begin{document}
\nocite{*}
\bibliography{\jobname}
\bibliographystyle{alpha} % change this style
\end{document}

You might want to have a look e.g. here to see examples of the different styles.

If you want your references like [W97] this link might be worth looking at.