8

I have a problem with the delimiter between multiple citations when using Biblatex-Chicago (compiling with XeLaTeX). Normally when citing multiple sources with \cites or \autocites, a semicolon appears between each source cited, but if the page-range ends with a full stop, this delimiter disappears for some reason.

Here's a minimum working example:

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage[authordate,backend=biber]{biblatex-chicago}
\addbibresource{DelimTestBib.bib}

\begin{document}

Here be dragons \autocites[57ff.]{Sievers1893}[33]{Kloekhorst2008}.

\printbibliography
\end{document}

The test bibliography file contains these two entries:

@book{Sievers1893,
author = "Eduard Sievers",
title = "Altgermanische Metrik",
date = "1893",
publisher = "Max Niemeyer",
address = "Halle",
}

@book{Kloekhorst2008,
author = "Alwin Kloekhorst",
title = "Etymological Dictionary of the Hittite Inherited Lexicon",
date = "2008",
publisher = "Brill",
address = "Leiden",
}

This gives me the following output:

enter image description here

Ideally the citation would be '(Sievers 1893, 57ff.; Kloekhorst 2008, 33)'. Obviously this can be corrected manually (by putting [57ff.;] as the page-range, for instance), but I'd like to have a more automatic solution if there is one.

I should mention that this problem occurs whether I use authordate style or footnotes.

Sebastiano
  • 54,118
Nelson
  • 147

2 Answers2

8

It's actually simpler: the period in “ff.” should not be sentence ending, so the rules of LaTeX say it should be followed by \@.

\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@book{Sievers1893,
author = "Eduard Sievers",
title = "Altgermanische Metrik",
date = "1893",
publisher = "Max Niemeyer",
address = "Halle",
}

@book{Kloekhorst2008,
author = "Alwin Kloekhorst",
title = "Etymological Dictionary of the Hittite Inherited Lexicon",
date = "2008",
publisher = "Brill",
address = "Leiden",
}
\end{filecontents*}

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage[authordate,backend=biber]{biblatex-chicago}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}

Here be dragons \autocites[57ff.\@]{Sievers1893}[33]{Kloekhorst2008}.

\printbibliography
\end{document}

(I used filecontents just to make the example self-contained, as usual.)

enter image description here

egreg
  • 1,121,712
  • I'm confused, I thought it was \@ before the full-stop to get a sentence-ending space and \␣ afterwards to get an interword space instead of a sentence-ending one? – Au101 Jul 14 '16 at 02:04
  • @Au101 \@. is for telling LaTeX that the period is sentence ending. The manual also describes .\@ for the converse. – egreg Jul 14 '16 at 08:16
  • Oh cool, I didn't know about that, thanks for the extra nugget of information :) +1 – Au101 Jul 14 '16 at 15:30
  • In the bibliography biblatex actually changes the space factor of several punctuation marks. It therefore has its own macro to mark up abbreviation dots: \isdot. So \autocites[57ff.\isdot]{Sievers1893}[33]{Kloekhorst2008} would be more biblatex-y to turn the . into a dot, but in the specific case of "f."/"ff." in page numbers \psq and \psqq as suggested in Ulrike's answer are much nicer. – moewe Oct 12 '19 at 06:38
8

You should better use \psqq instead of an hard coded ff and customize it to your needs. But at least you should use \adddot instead of a period:

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage[authordate,backend=biber]{biblatex-chicago}
\addbibresource{test.bib}

\DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{%
  sequens = {f\adddot},
  sequentes = {ff\adddot},
}

\renewcommand\sqspace{}

\begin{document}

Here be dragons \autocites[57\psqq ]{Sievers1893}[33]{Kloekhorst2008}.

\autocites[57ff\adddot ]{Sievers1893}[33]{Kloekhorst2008}.

\printbibliography
\end{document}

enter image description here

Ulrike Fischer
  • 327,261
  • 2
    (+1) Needless to say that if the OP writes in German (and TeX knows about it) \psq and \psqq already give "f." and "ff.". – moewe Jul 14 '16 at 06:29
  • This certainly works, thanks - but what's the advantage of this approach over egreg's suggestion? Simply the flexibility should I ever want to use sqq. instead? – Nelson Jul 14 '16 at 08:21
  • 2
    Yes, the flexibility is preserved, not only for the string but also the spacing, e.g. if you want a small space before the ff. Also with \psqq the number is identified as number, and so some styles can e.g. add pp. before it. 55\psqq can be formated as pp. 57 sqq., but 55ff.\@ will always be 55ff.. – Ulrike Fischer Jul 14 '16 at 08:55