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I am writing my thesis on the memoir class. I dont seem to figure out how to make natbib or else biblatex to work in this environment and so am having problems using the citet or shortcite commands to either have Author(Year) in the intext citations and AuthorA et. al (Year) in cases with more than two authors.The memoir manual doesn't seem to explicitly show how to formally use citations (or I am expecting too much from the manual). My institution uses the APA style and so am caged to make this work. Relating to the bibliography, this is my MWE:

\documentclass[12pt, a4paper, openany]{memoir}
\usepackage{apacite}
\bibliographystyle{apacite}
\begin{document}
\bibliographystyle{apacite}
\bibliography{\file.bib}
\end{document}

and from the file.bib I got;

@article{andreoni2011avoiding,
    Author = {Andreoni, J and Rao, Justin M and Trachtman, Hannah},
    Journal = {Empathy, and Charitable Giving, memo},
    Title = {Avoiding The Ask: A Field Experiment on Altruism},
    Year = {2011}
}

Any suggestions please?

Hyperref:

Here is what I do to have my citations url and the ToC to hyperlink and in blue coulor. I intend to change the color before submitting my thesis as this is not acceptable in my University. Either way, I need to be able to quickly find an intext citation entry in my document as I develop it. I am thinking coloring will help me.

\usepackage{hyperref}
\hypersetup{
    colorlinks   = true, 
    urlcolor     = blue, 
    linkcolor    = blue, 
    citecolor   = blue 
}

The error message is that I am using a caption command with memoir class.

George Kariuki
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    I'm not sure what the problem is exactly. memoir allows you to use any bibliography system you like; there is no "default" for it. But in your example code you should write \bibliography{file} not \file.bib if your bibliography file is called file.bib. You also shouldn't have the second \bibliographystyle command. – Alan Munn Sep 04 '17 at 03:59
  • See the examples in the answers here for two ways to do APA bibliographies: How can I implement a comprehensive apa-style citation and bibliography. Both are compatible with memoir. – Alan Munn Sep 04 '17 at 04:03
  • check this answer: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/5091/what-to-do-to-switch-to-biblatex – djnavas Sep 04 '17 at 04:13
  • Thanking you gladly. I agree I needed to indicate \bibliography{file}. The links too have exposed more options. Do you have an idea why I get error warnings when I use the usepackage{hyperref} to customize my citation and url to have appear clickable and in blue color? see edited MWE above. – George Kariuki Sep 04 '17 at 14:23
  • Having fixed my citation problems and reloaded the hyperref command, all seems OK now. I have my colored highlighting. I also did a thorough background check with the memoir manual and that has been helpful. Thanks! – George Kariuki Sep 05 '17 at 00:28

1 Answers1

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Some comments and observations:

  • The memoir document class neither provides nor expects any particular bibliography style.

  • If you want to use natbib-like commands such as \citet and \citep while using the apacite citation management package, you should load apacite with the option natbibapa: 

    \usepackage[natbibapa]{apacite}

    Do not load natbib separately.

  • Don't issue two \bibliographystyle instructions.

  • The argument of \bibliography should be file, not \file.bib, right?

  • Whatever else you decide to do, you really, really need to update the contents of the bibliographic entry. After all, the piece was published in the June 2017 issue of the Journal of Political Economy. 

    @article{andreoni-rao-trachtman:2017,
  author  = {James Andreoni and Justin M. Rao and Hannah Trachtman},
  title   = {Avoiding the Ask: A Field Experiment on 
             Altruism, Empathy, and Charitable Giving},
  journal = {Journal of Political Economy},
  volume  = {125},
  number  = {3},
  pages   = {625--653},
  year    = {2017},
  doi     = {10.1086/691703},
  eprint  = {https://doi.org/10.1086/691703},
}

And the revised MWE might look like this:

\documentclass[12pt, a4paper, openany]{memoir}
\usepackage[natbibapa]{apacite}
\bibliographystyle{apacite}

\begin{document}
\citet{andreoni-rao-trachtman:2017}
\bibliography{file}
\end{document}
Mico
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  • Thank you so much. This is now helpful on my end. The only thing I am left grappling with is to make the first author surname appear with et. al for cases with more than two authors. I am currently reading the apacite manual to see how I can make this work. – George Kariuki Sep 04 '17 at 14:11
  • thank you for the heads up on the bibliographic content. I think I compiled my dotbibfile at a time when this work was not published at the Journal of Political Economy. My bad. – George Kariuki Sep 04 '17 at 14:13
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    @GeorgeKariuki - For bibliographic entries with 3 to 5 authors, I believe that APA style is to list all authors the first time a piece is cited and to use the "firstautor et al" truncation convention for subsequent citation call-outs. Special rules apply for pieces with 6 or more authors. Do consult the APA guidelines for all the (painful!) details... – Mico Sep 04 '17 at 15:54
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    A good (painful) thing to read the APA manual guidelines. I literally need to do nothing if APA style is what I have to comply with so yes, all authors get cited in the first instance but in subsequent times, I get what I needed. Thank you. – George Kariuki Sep 05 '17 at 00:16