Include periods in end title names in references

Question

I have a LaTeX document using the custom bibliography to build bibliographies. I would like to know how I may include periods at end of titles. I created my custom bst using LaTeX makebst program.

Here is my working MWE. I want my references to print as follows:

Mada J, Idzumi M and Tokihiro T 2005 Path description of conserved quantities of generalized periodic box-ball systems. Journal of mathematical physics 46(2):022701

Notice there is addition of period between article title and Journal name.

I seem to remember that this has to do with the block-separator, but changing that in the already created .bst file could be complicated. You may be lucky, but in general it is hard to find anybody who still understands the .bst-language. If you have the possibility, I would strongly recommend to switch to BibLaTeX, which offers much more functionality. — Manuel Weinkauf, Feb 21 '17 at 15:09
@ManuelWeinkauf the references presented here is it possible to compile them with BibLaTeX without the .bst Language? — Mafeni Alpha, Feb 21 '17 at 18:11
Certainly, and very easily so. Just have a look here and here for some quick guides how to switch to BibLaTeX. — Manuel Weinkauf, Feb 21 '17 at 18:37
@ManuelWeinkauf I tryed your way but thats not easy way. The easy way is to use custom bib. Your way will involve a lot of fixes. — Mafeni Alpha, Feb 21 '17 at 20:12
It certainly requires some learning, but is the much more flexible method. So if you want to stick to LaTeX in the future, it is well worth investing the time. And frankly speaking, there are hardly any "fixes" needed, because basically (i.e. with standard output) BibLaTeX is fully compatible with BibTeX documents. It only requires replacing \bibliography{Lit} with \printbibliography, adding addbibresource{Lit.bib} in the preamble, and deleting \bibliographystyle{}. Hardly any work at all. — Manuel Weinkauf, Feb 22 '17 at 10:37
However, if you insist to stay with BibTeX you cannot ecpect to get any help with the question you posted. In this case you have to provide a minimal working example: a preamble with only the most necessary packages and \documentclass and a short text between \begin{document}--\end{document} demonstrating the problem (in your case, producing a citation). Since you use a custom bst-file, you will have to provide this one as well in this case, because noone else has access to it and knows what's in there. — Manuel Weinkauf, Feb 22 '17 at 10:40
@ManuelWeinkauf I have already included MWE. I put it at Github because it has more lines because of the bst file. — Mafeni Alpha, Feb 22 '17 at 14:22
I see, my bad. But unfortunately I do not know much about the .bst language. I think you either have to change FUNCTION {new.block} in a way that inserts a period, or define a new function that does that, and then insert a call to this function in FUNCTION {article} probably after format.title "title". But I am not sure if that works and how exactly. Maybe ask someone who actually knows this language. — Manuel Weinkauf, Feb 22 '17 at 15:09
@ManuelWeinkauf I am really looking for such solution. The problem as you may have noted is to identify where I need to change. I formulated this with makebst program and I have little knowledge of the Language used. — Mafeni Alpha, Feb 22 '17 at 17:41

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 23 '17 at 02:00

To get the references to be print as you wish you need to change one function in your used bibliography style file research.bst. Search for function format.title and change it to (I added add.period$ " " * to add the period and a blank):

FUNCTION {format.title}
{ title
    duplicate$ empty$ 'skip$
    { "t" change.case$ 
      add.period$ " " * 
    }
    if$
    "title" bibinfo.check
}

With the following MWE

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@Article{mada2005path,
  Title     = {Path description of conserved quantities of generalized periodic box-ball systems},
  Author    = {Mada, Jun and Idzumi, Makoto and Tokihiro, Tetsuji},
  Year      = {2005},
  Number    = {2},
  Pages     = {022701},
  Volume    = {46},
  Journal   = {Journal of mathematical physics},
  Publisher = {AIP Publishing},
}
@Article{maday1988error,
  Title   = {Error analysis for spectral approximation of the Korteweg-de Vries equation},
  Author  = {Maday, Y and Quarteroni, A},
  Year    = {1988},
  Number  = {3},
  Pages   = {499--529},
  Volume  = {22},
  Journal = {RAIRO-Mod{\'e}lisation math{\'e}matique et analyse num{\'e}rique},
}
\end{filecontents}


\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{natbib}


\begin{document}
I try to cite here \cite{mada2005path}. 
Cross checking citing here \cite{maday1988error}. 

\bibliographystyle{research} % Changed research.bst !!!!!!
\bibliography{\jobname} 
\end{document}

you get the wished result:

Include periods in end title names in references

1 Answers1