Line break in citation with organization as author

Question

I have the following reference:

@MISC{EX2012,
  author = {{S}ingle {A}uthor {O}rganization},
  year = {2012},
  title = {Example}
}

A citation for this is breaking after "Author", but extending beyond the margin, as shown in the following example layout in the PDF:

Demo text demo text demo to margin
Demo text which cites it (Single Author
Organization, 2012) and flows over
the margin.

How can I solve this? I am using natbib and citing with \citep{EX2012}.

Mico · Answer 1 · 2013-03-20T14:28:20.323

Without some extra help, BibTeX and natbib cannot tell that you're dealing with a "corporate" author; instead, BibTeX thinks that you're dealing with an author who has two given names, viz., Single and Author, and one family name, Organization. As a result (see also @egreg's answer), the optional argument -- which is used when creating callouts via a command such as \citep -- of the \bibitem with key EX2012 is formed as {S}ingle~{A}uthor {O}rganization, and LaTeX can't find a hyphenation point within the first, concatenated "word".

When dealing with a "corporate" author, it's recommended to encase the entire argument in an extra set of curly braces. Thus, you should write

author = {{Single Author Organization}},

This will ensure that BibTeX will treat this particular author correctly. This, in turn, will lead to a better setup of the optional argument of the associated \bibitem, letting LaTeX find more permissible break points within the words "Author", "Single", and "Organization".

The braces in the question have no influence on hyphenation; it's right to enclose the author in an additional pair of braces, but that's not the problem. — egreg, Mar 20 '13 at 13:52
Thanks. I know you were first, but I'm going to accept egreg's answer. — SabreWolfy, Mar 20 '13 at 14:34

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 20 '13 at 13:57

The problem is that in the .bbl file the entry becomes

\bibitem[{S}ingle~{A}uthor {O}rganization(2012)]{EX2012}
{S}ingle~{A}uthor {O}rganization.
\newblock Example, 2012.

(I'm assuming you use natbib). This is because BibTeX interprets the author as having two given names, precisely "Single Author" and a family name "Organization"; in these cases a tie is put between the given names.

There's no need to protect uppercase letters in the author field (which is instead necessary in the title field). In order to tell BibTeX that the author has only a "family name", enclose the name in additional braces:

@MISC{EX2012,
  author = {{Single Author Organization}},
  year = {2012},
  title = {Example}
}

Line break in citation with organization as author

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