20

I was wondering whether there is any way to change single entries in a bibliography. I want the cite command to give me a short version of this very long entry. I know I could change it manually in the *.bbl-file, but it would constantly be overwritten. Any solutions, suggestions or even a faint idea how to do this? Would biblatex offer something?

\begin{filecontents}{testbib.bib} 
@book{long, 
 author={{Very long long long long author}}, 
title={Title}, 
publisher={Publisher}, 
year={2011}, 
 } 
 \end{filecontents} 

\documentclass[12pt]{scrartcl} 
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} 
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}     
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel} 
\usepackage{natbib} 

\begin{document} 
 \cite{long}  
\bibliographystyle{natdin} 
\bibliography{testbib} 
\end{document}
lockstep
  • 250,273
meep.meep
  • 16,905

1 Answers1

22

Yes, it would. :-) Namely, the shortauthor field:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[style=authoryear]{biblatex}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{biblatextest.bib}
@book{long, 
  author={{Very long long long long author}}, 
  shortauthor={Shortauthor},
  year={2011}, 
  title={Title}, 
  publisher={Publisher}, 
}
\end{filecontents}

% \bibliography{biblatextest}% Syntax for version <= 1.1b
\addbibresource{biblatextest.bib}% Syntax for version >= 1.2    

\begin{document}

Some text \autocite{long}.

\printbibliography

\end{document}
lockstep
  • 250,273
  • @meep.meep: If my answer was helpful to you, please upvote it. (You may also accept it when you're sure no better answer comes along. :-)) – lockstep Feb 21 '11 at 21:13
  • 3
    To the person who downvoted: I'm sorry that you didn't find my answer useful. If my example didn't compile for you, replace \addbibresource{biblatextest.bib} with \bibliography{biblatextest} -- this should work for older biblatex versions (up to 1.1). – lockstep Mar 15 '11 at 15:30
  • Is there a possibility to make biblatex-apa coming up with (APA, 2013) after I already cited (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2000)? Note the different book reference (different dsm versions in my case). By now the shortauthor is set in brackets when citing each new book, although it has the same author American Psychiatric Association [APA]. – entne Oct 23 '13 at 15:16
  • Is there a way to do this also in natbib? (I used this method and it did not work) – canIchangethis Nov 18 '22 at 14:11
  • Keep in mind that if you´re using APA, the first time you use the entry to cite the full author gets printed. In my case that´s in the glossary, one of the worst places as the entries get really long. – devbf Jan 20 '24 at 13:22