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I'm preparing a submission to a journal that expects citations in the format [Author(year)]. Based on the examples in, for example, this answer, abbrvnat seems to fit my requirements. Unfortunately, citations appear differently in my example.

My document looks as follows:

\documentclass[]{article}
\usepackage[square]{natbib}
\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents*}{ref.bib}
  @book{Knu86,
    author = {Knuth, Donald E.},
    year = {1986},
    title = {The \TeX book},
  }
\end{filecontents*}

\begin{document}

Text including citation \cite{Knu86}.

\bibliographystyle{abbrvnat}
\bibliography{ref}

\end{document}

I'd expect the following output:

Expected output

Instead, running pdfLaTeX and bibTeX produces the following result:

enter image description here

What can I do to achieve the expected output?

I'm open to switching to Biblatex, but the solution presented here formats citations as [Knu86] instead of [Knuth(1986)]. I'd be interested in customizing Biblatex to fit my needs, but what I don't understand is why abbrvnat doesn't already do what I expect. Clearly, I end up with a different result than every example of abbrvnat I can find.

Community
  • 1
user3364120
  • 103
  • I'm open to switching to Biblatex, but the solution presented in the linked question formats citations as [Knu86] instead of [Knuth(1986)]. I'd be interested in customizing Biblatex to fit my needs, but what I don't understand is why abbrvnat doesn't already do what I expect. Clearly, I end up with a different result than every example of abbrvnat I can find. – user3364120 Dec 22 '15 at 08:50

1 Answers1

2

The solution consists in not loading the natbib package.

enter image description here

\documentclass[]{article}
%\usepackage[square]{natbib}  % don't load the natbib package

\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{ref.bib}
  @book{Knu86,
    author = {Knuth, Donald E.},
    year = {1986},
    title = {The \TeX book},
  }
\end{filecontents*}

\begin{document}

Text including citation \cite{Knu86}.

\bibliographystyle{abbrvnat}
\bibliography{ref}
\end{document}
Mico
  • 506,678
  • Thank you! Some background information I found: abbrvnat has a different meaning when loading natbib. The bibliography styles abbrv and abbrvnat are different when natbib is not loaded. When natbib is loaded, abbrvnat refers to a natbib-compatible version of abbrv, not abbrvnat. – user3364120 Dec 22 '15 at 09:25
  • @user3364120 - I'm not sure I follow your comment. I'd describe the situation as follows: The abbrvnat bibliography style writes a string such as Knuth(1986) to the optional argument of each \bibitem in the .bbl file; this happens whether or not natbib is loaded. Then, if natbib is not loaded, the contents of the optional argument are written out as such, i.e., without modification, for each \cite instruction and at the start of each formatted bib entry. Conversely, if natbib is loaded, either an authoryear-style or a numeric-style citation label is generated. – Mico Dec 22 '15 at 15:38