Bibtex in-text citation using "et al." How do you insert 's to indicate possession?

Question

I'm citing an in-text reference using natbib and a Harvard-style. The way I've constructed the sentence indicates possession, for example:

Smith et al.'s (2009) recent study ...

What I get when using \citet{} is:

Smith et al. (2009) recent study ...

Is there a way to add the apostrophe and s in this context? I tried placing it in the square brackets \citet[][]{} but that doesn't work.

You can always rewrite; "The recent study by Smith et al. (2009)..." — Arturo Magidin, Jan 03 '11 at 05:27
True, but in something the length of a dissertation it's nice to be able to vary the sentence structure. — Steve, Jan 03 '11 at 07:20
Very similar concept to http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/6613/ — Joseph Wright, Feb 18 '11 at 22:46

frabjous · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-03T06:06:16.003

11

It's not exactly pretty (especially if you're using hyperlinks or backreferences), but you could use \citeauthor{key}'s \citeyearpar{key}.

If you do this a lot you could define a command:

\newcommand{\citetapos}[1]{\citeauthor{#1}'s \citeyearpar{#1}}

That way you could avoid having to insert the key twice.

edited Jan 03 '11 at 06:06

answered Jan 03 '11 at 05:56

frabjous

1

That's great frabjous, thanks a lot. I added some text color to make the apostrophe blend in with the rest of the hyperlink: \newcommand{\citetapos}[1]{\citeauthor{#1}{\textcolor{blue}{'s}} \citeyearpar{#1}} – Steve Jan 03 '11 at 07:21
2

Just be careful using this with authors whose names end with 's'. – Alan Munn Jan 03 '11 at 15:00
Good point - it would be better to deal with those 'manually' - using separate /citeauthor and \citeyearpar commands. – Steve Jan 03 '11 at 16:16
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I don't see the problem. It is perfectly acceptable to add 's to proper names ending in s. In fact, some grammar guides recommend that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Singular_nouns_ending_with_an_.E2.80.9Cs.E2.80.9D_or_.E2.80.9Cz.E2.80.9D_sound – frabjous Jan 03 '11 at 16:31
Fair enough, though I think it looks odd to do that - it's just the way i've been taught. Good to know that it's not a grammatical 'error' at least. – Steve Jan 03 '11 at 17:08
citeauthor and citeyear works for me. but for some reason citeyearpar does not, giving an error as undefined control sequence. i am using biblatex – Vipin Verma Feb 07 '21 at 06:27

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