How to cite full title in footnote with alphabetic citation style

Question

I'm writing my thesis and I'm struggling with the correct choice of citation style.

I'm leaning towards alphabetic style, since I find that it's easy to read and makes it easy to recall what reference the citation refers to if it's a repeat, without checking the footnote (which, I think, is quite a distraction), or even worse the end of the paper (which is not so bad when reading a PDF where you can just click a hyperlink and then use a backref to go back, but it's a lot more of hassle when reading a printed document).

However, I would like it to be possible to add a footnote with a more verbose reference. So that when I have, say,

\autocite{AB12}

the output is [AB12] where cited, and in addition, something like

[AB12] Abelard and Baginsky, Bogus paper (2012)

appears in footnote. How can I accomplish that?

@moewe: I can't really do that, since the point is, I don't know how to accomplish that. Or maybe I just don't understand what kind of example you're asking about? — tomasz, Mar 16 '14 at 17:19
Well, you say you "lean towards alphabetic style". Does that mean you actually would like to use style=alphabetic? — moewe, Mar 16 '14 at 17:22
@moewe: I don't really care, I might use a different style, but I would like the inline part of the citation to look like it does with the alphabetic style. — tomasz, Mar 16 '14 at 17:23

moewe · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-05T06:57:32.257

In light of the comments, I have revised my answer, the old version is further down.

We first need to define a new wrapper for a marker-less footnote

\makeatletter
\newrobustcmd{\mkbibblfootnote}[1]{%
  \iftoggle{blx@footnote}
    {\blx@warning{Nested notes}%
     \addspace\mkbibparens{#1}}
    {\unspace
     \ifnum\blx@notetype=\tw@
       \expandafter\@firstoftwo
     \else
       \expandafter\@secondoftwo
     \fi
       {\csuse{blx@theendnote}{\protecting{\blxmkbibnote{end}{#1}}}}
       {\csuse{blfootnote}{\protecting{\blxmkbibnote{foot}{#1}}}}}}

\newcommand\blfootnote[1]{\begingroup\let\thefootnote\relax\footnotetext{#1}\endgroup}
\makeatother

\megafullcite now prints the alphabetic label and, if it is the first time this work was cited - for that feature, we need citetracker in any of its flavours (see § 3.1.2.3, p. 54 of the biblatex documentation); in the MWE I chose strict -, also prints a marker-less footnote with the alphabetic label, the author name, year and title.

The footnote for \megafullcite{wilde} is

[Wil99] Wilde (1899), The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People.

\DeclareCiteCommand{\megafullcite}
  {\usebibmacro{prenote}}
  {\mkbibbrackets{\usebibmacro{cite}}%
   \ifciteseen{}
   {\mkbibblfootnote{%
     \mkbibbrackets{\usebibmacro{cite}}%
     \setunit{\addspace}%
     \usebibmacro{morecite}}}}
  {\multicitedelim}
  {\usebibmacro{postnote}}

\newbibmacro*{morecite}{%
  \printnames{labelname}%
  \setunit{\addspace}%
  \printfield[parens]{year}%
  \setunit{\nametitledelim}%
  \printfield[citetitle]{labeltitle}}

MWE

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[british]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=alphabetic,backend=biber,citetracker=strict]{biblatex}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\makeatletter
\newrobustcmd{\mkbibblfootnote}[1]{%
  \iftoggle{blx@footnote}
    {\blx@warning{Nested notes}%
     \addspace\mkbibparens{#1}}
    {\unspace
     \ifnum\blx@notetype=\tw@
       \expandafter\@firstoftwo
     \else
       \expandafter\@secondoftwo
     \fi
       {\csuse{blx@theendnote}{\protecting{\blxmkbibnote{end}{#1}}}}
       {\csuse{blfootnote}{\protecting{\blxmkbibnote{foot}{#1}}}}}}

\newcommand\blfootnote[1]{\begingroup\let\thefootnote\relax\footnotetext{#1}\endgroup}
\makeatother

\DeclareCiteCommand{\megafullcite}
  {\usebibmacro{prenote}}
  {\mkbibbrackets{\usebibmacro{cite}}%
   \ifciteseen{}
   {\mkbibblfootnote{%
     \mkbibbrackets{\usebibmacro{cite}}%
     \setunit{\addspace}%
     \usebibmacro{morecite}}}}
  {\multicitedelim}
  {\usebibmacro{postnote}}

\newbibmacro*{morecite}{%
  \printnames{labelname}%
  \setunit{\addspace}%
  \printfield[parens]{year}%
  \setunit{\nametitledelim}%
  \printfield[citetitle]{labeltitle}}

\begin{document}
  Lorem ipsum \megafullcite{wilde} again \megafullcite{wilde}.

  Lorem ipsum \megafullcite{wilde,cicero}.

  Lorem ipsum \megafullcite{baez/article,baez/online}.

  \printbibliography
\end{document}

enter image description here

This is the old version of the answer, it implements a more verbose version with \fullcite

We can define two new citation commands

\megafootfullcite will print the alphabetic label and the full bibliography entry in the footnote.

\DeclareCiteCommand{\megafootfullcite}[\mkbibfootnote]
  {\usebibmacro{prenote}}
  {\mkbibbrackets{\usebibmacro{cite}}%
   \setunit{\addspace}%
   \usedriver
     {\DeclareNameAlias{sortname}{default}}
     {\thefield{entrytype}}}
  {\multicitedelim}
  {\usebibmacro{postnote}}

so \megafootfullcite{wilde} gives a footnote with the contents

[Wil99] Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People. Leonard Smithers and Company, 1899.

\megafullcite prints the alphabetic label in the text and adds a footnote for the full bibliography entry.

\DeclareCiteCommand{\megafullcite}
  {\usebibmacro{prenote}}
  {\mkbibbrackets{\usebibmacro{cite}}%
   \mkbibfootnote{\usedriver
     {\DeclareNameAlias{sortname}{default}}%
     {\thefield{entrytype}}}}
  {\multicitedelim}
  {\usebibmacro{postnote}}

or

\DeclareCiteCommand{\megafullcite}
  {\usebibmacro{prenote}}
  {\mkbibbrackets{\usebibmacro{cite}}%
   \mkbibfootnote{%
     \mkbibbrackets{\usebibmacro{cite}}%
     \setunit{\addspace}%
     \usedriver
       {\DeclareNameAlias{sortname}{default}}%
       {\thefield{entrytype}}}}
  {\multicitedelim}
  {\usebibmacro{postnote}}

The two version above differ in that the latter will put the alphabetic label into the footnote as well, the former will not repeat the label in the footnote.

MWE

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[british]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=alphabetic]{biblatex}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\DeclareCiteCommand{\megafootfullcite}[\mkbibfootnote]
  {\usebibmacro{prenote}}
  {\mkbibbrackets{\usebibmacro{cite}}%
   \setunit{\addspace}%
   \usedriver
     {\DeclareNameAlias{sortname}{default}}%
     {\thefield{entrytype}}}
  {\multicitedelim}
  {\usebibmacro{postnote}}


\DeclareCiteCommand{\megafullcite}
  {\usebibmacro{prenote}}
  {\mkbibbrackets{\usebibmacro{cite}}%
   \mkbibfootnote{\usedriver
     {\DeclareNameAlias{sortname}{default}}%
     {\thefield{entrytype}}}}
  {\multicitedelim}
  {\usebibmacro{postnote}}

\begin{document}
  Lorem ipsum\megafootfullcite{wilde} and \megafullcite{wilde}.

  Lorem ipsum\megafootfullcite{wilde,cicero} and \megafullcite{wilde,cicero}.

  \printbibliography
\end{document}

enter image description here

That's interesting, but what if I wanted to change a few things: only print some of the information (like the kind that authortitle style gives), only put each footnote once, and omit footnote numbering altogether? — tomasz, Mar 16 '14 at 17:46
@tomasz If you want only author and title, that can be done as well, putting the footnote only once would be possible as well (I think), but why would one omit footnote numbering (and what would that look like)? — moewe, Mar 16 '14 at 17:47
It would print the same as what you've written except without the superscripted numbers (obviously, \megafootfullcite doesn't make much sense like that, but \megafullcite does). So that the only difference in behaviour compared to vanilla would be that instead of just the inline part, the foot part also appears, but without any hyperlinks referring to it. If that's too complicated to bother, it's okay, alphabetic is not so bad, and it's commonly used, so that's fine. I was just wondering if there's some simple way to do what I had thought about. — tomasz, Mar 16 '14 at 17:51

How to cite full title in footnote with alphabetic citation style

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