[Tex/LaTex] Use et al. in biblatex custom style

author-numberbiblatex

I have been working on a custom biblatex style, for which I want the bibliography to display at most 2 authors, meaning that the entries should be either:

  • First (single author)
  • First & Second (two authors)
  • First et al. (three and more)

I came up with the following name format, to which I feed the first three authors using \printnames[][1-3]{author}\space in the \DeclareBibliographyDriver commands.

%%%% authors
\DeclareNameFormat{author}{%
    \ifthenelse{\value{listcount}=1}%
        {#1 \ifblank{#4}{}{\addcomma\space #4}}%
        {%
            \ifthenelse{\value{liststop}=2}%
                {\space\&\space\ifblank{#4}{}{#4\space}#1}%
                {%
                    \ifthenelse{\value{listcount}=3}%
                        {\space}%
                        {, et~al.}%
                }%
        }%
    }%

It's working just fine, but given that I intend to move to biblatex, I'd like to have a very clean code, so the question is basically: how can it be improved?

Best Answer

What about name lists for editors or translators? If you want to apply the same truncation throughout, just use the package option maxnames=2. The rest is achieved by redefining \finalnamedelim - a macro that sets the delimiter before the final item in a name list.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=authoryear,maxnames=2]{biblatex}

\renewcommand*{\finalnamedelim}{\addspace\&\space}

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
Filler text \parencite{bertram,companion,jaffe,moraux}.
\printbibliography
\end{document}

enter image description here

The above sample document applies the format in both citations and the bibliography. To limit it only to the bibliography, use the option maxbibnames=2 and

\renewcommand*{\finalnamedelim}{%
  \ifbibliography
    {\addspace\&\space}
    {\ifnumgreater{\value{liststop}}{2}{\finalandcomma}{}%
     \addspace\bibstring{and}\space}}

If you're really determined to define your own style, I'd use the generic name formats from biblatex.def as a starting point. Your format deviates from these in terms of name delimiters (\bibnamedelim...), name part format (\mkbibname..., casing, initials, order, etc.), elimination of spurious whitespace (\addspace) and localization (\bibstring{andothers}). Unless you apply similar formats to editor, bookauthor, translator, etc. your name lists will appear inconsistent.

Related Question