How to change font size for bibliography?

Question

I want to use a smaller font size for the bibliography, e.g., \footnotesize. What is the easiest way to achieve this? I currently do \renewenvironment{thebibliography}... and copy the definition from report.cls but with the \footnotesize inserted in. However, that seems to be a bit of a hack, so I'm looking for a cleaner way.

I think your current method is the cleanest. If you find yourself doing this a lot, you might consider moving it from your document's preamble to a personal style (.sty) file. — godbyk, Jul 27 '10 at 17:05
the ams document classes define \bibliofont for this purpose. it's worth checking the document class you are using before redefining thebibliography, but if a suitable command isn't available, your method is appropriate. — barbara beeton, Apr 29 '12 at 11:12
Possible duplicate of With BibLatex, how do I make the fontsize of the bibliography smaller? — Waldir Leoncio, Jun 15 '17 at 12:23
@WaldirLeoncio While I can see that there is a overlap between the two questions, I would not close this question here as a duplicate of the one you linked to. If at all I would do it the other way round. The question here has answers for all bibliography packages. The question you linked to is specific to biblatex. Plus the question here has more views, votes, and is older. — moewe, Jun 15 '17 at 13:04

score 156 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 06 '12 at 08:09

156

Using the biblatex package you could also write

\renewcommand*{\bibfont}{\footnotesize}

(Personally I'd use \small instead of \footnotesize.)

edited Jul 06 '12 at 08:09

doncherry

54,637

answered Aug 09 '10 at 22:46

lockstep

250,273

1

seems that it does not work with \footcite? – pluton Aug 29 '11 at 22:59
This will lose the process of lowercasing letters of reference titles... – xuhdev Mar 26 '16 at 02:36
11

To mirror the exact definition of biblatex.def I would use \renewcommand*{\bibfont}{\normalfont\footnotesize}. – moewe Jun 15 '17 at 13:06
In Rmarkdown, the following worked for me: \renewcommand\bibliographytypesize{\small}. – M M Oct 23 '20 at 11:46

score 146 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 27 '10 at 11:00

146

First I have to say that you should avoid fiddling with font sizes in order to squish more text into a document. Conferences and journals often discourage such formatting hacks; some might even reject papers found to be doing this.

Anyway, if you still need to to this for whatever reason, the easiest way I found is to write something like

{\footnotesize
\bibliography{bibfile}}

answered Jul 27 '10 at 11:00

Juan A. Navarro

62,139
32
140
169

2

I thought this would also change the font size of the "References" heading, but to my surprise it doesn't. Nice! – Jitse Niesen Jul 28 '10 at 09:41
45

I wouldn't consider bibliographies typeset in a smaller size as a formatting hack - I've seen it quite often in professionally typeset books. – lockstep Aug 09 '10 at 22:49
8

@JitseNiesen: Unfortunately it changed size of the heading in my case. – nimcap Dec 21 '11 at 17:33
@nimcap, which packages are you using? if you cannot solve your problem, you might try to ask a new question. – Juan A. Navarro Dec 22 '11 at 16:53
@JuanA.Navarro: I did as the original asker's way, changed the sty file. – nimcap Dec 22 '11 at 17:14
3

This does not work with \fontsize{5cm}{5.5cm}. Only part of the bibliography takes the new size formatting... :/ – Atcold May 27 '16 at 20:04
This command reduces changed the font (or decreased spacing between the lines) in the section just above the \bibliography{} – sreeraj t Feb 17 '20 at 11:37

score 71 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 06 '12 at 08:08

71

And if you use the natbib package:

\def\bibfont{\footnotesize}

edited Jul 06 '12 at 08:08

doncherry

54,637

answered Aug 09 '10 at 23:21

Jukka Suomela

20,795
13
74
91

1

This way looks the most elegant for me, thanks – yegor256 Nov 01 '10 at 15:27
3

If you are having problems with getting itshapes, you can use \renewcommand{\bibfont}{\normalfont\small} – Felix Hoffmann Apr 29 '12 at 08:24
should this be now a \renewcommand ? it did not work for me. – user855443 Jun 09 '18 at 14:51

score 33 · Answer 4 · edited Sep 13 '16 at 12:20

33

Using beamer+biblatex you could also write

\frame[shrink=50] {\printbibliography}

And using beamer+bibtex you could write accordingly

\frame[shrink=50] {\bibliography{bibfile}}

edited Sep 13 '16 at 12:20

Exocom

576

answered Nov 28 '10 at 22:08

@Exocom how do we use shrink with allowframebreaks – rudresh dwivedi Jan 05 '17 at 15:39
1

\begin{frame}[allowframebreaks, shrink=60] \bibliography{bibfile} \bibliographystyle{style} \end{frame} – pyaj Jul 06 '21 at 14:38
Very useful for beamer, where for me, \footnotesize wasn't doing anything. Also, a thing to note, higher the number given to shrink, higher it shrinks. So, a value of 20 does not mean it shrinks "to" 20% but "by" 20%. – Hrishikesh Jan 12 '22 at 05:56

How to change font size for bibliography?

4 Answers4

Linked

Related