4

I want to put "ed"/"eds" in parentheses with no dot. I can do the parentheses, but not remove the dot. How do I remove it?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[style=authoryear]{biblatex}
\DeclareFieldFormat{editortype}{\mkbibparens{#1}}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{sidn2013,
    Address = {Oxford},
    Booktitle = {The handbook of conversation analysis},
    Editor = {Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers},
    Publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell},
    Title = {The handbook of conversation analysis},
    Year = {2013}
     }
\end{filecontents}
\begin{document}
\nocite{*}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

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Gareth Walker
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    Do you plan to follow this MHRA style? In that document there seem to be dots after the abbreviations? – moewe Jul 22 '16 at 14:25
  • Ah, good point. It seems like I need to have a dot after "ed", but not after "eds". (I'm working through my own institution's description of MHRA style, which didn't make this clear.) Using \DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{editors=eds\nopunct} seems to handle that. – Gareth Walker Jul 23 '16 at 09:23
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    The \nopunct shouldn't normally be necessary there, I believe. It is only needed to suppress punctuation that might follow, not instead of punctuation if you don't want any. – moewe Jul 23 '16 at 10:37
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    Maybe you are interested in this first (and very rough) attempt at following the MHRA style. Currently localisation strings are missing, but maybe it can give you some ideas. – moewe Jul 24 '16 at 13:44
  • That's terrific - and more progress than I had made on a proper package ;-) I'll take a look. – Gareth Walker Jul 24 '16 at 18:58

1 Answers1

3

The dot is added in the .lbx (specifically english.lbx) file where we find amongst others

  editor           = {{editor}{ed\adddot}},
  editors          = {{editors}{eds\adddot}},

That means that the abbreviated versions include a dot. And there are many more abbreviations for certain roles that include a dot.

If you only need to change a few stings, you can use \DefineBibliographyStrings in the preamble of your file.

\DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{%
  editor           = {ed},
  editors          = {eds},
}

With that command, however, you cannot change the full and abbreviated versions of the string separately. Additionally, if you need to change lots of strings, your preamble might get bloated.

Alternatively, you can define an .lbx of your own. Create a new file called english-dotless.lbx where LaTeX can find it with the content

\ProvidesFile{english-dotless.lbx}

\InheritBibliographyExtras{english}

\DeclareBibliographyStrings{%
  inherit          = {english},
  editor           = {{editor}{ed}},
  editors          = {{editors}{eds}},
}


\endinput

and all the other strings from english.lbx you need to change.

Then in your document issue \DeclareLanguageMapping{english}{english-dotless} and your new file will be used instead of the standard English strings. (Of course this method works for all languages that have existing .lbx files.) For more on custom .lbx files see Changing another language “et al.” to “et al.” as well as What is the most appropriate way to configure biblatex for use with an unsupported language?.

Community
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moewe
  • 175,683
  • Agh, I had already managed to use \DefineBibliographyStrings to change "et al" to "and others" with \DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{andothers={and others}} but just hadn't made the connection with this issue. The answer works perfectly, and taught me a lot. – Gareth Walker Jul 21 '16 at 19:30