Forcing `et al.` in selected places

Question

I am using XeLaTeX together with biblatex. I am typesetting a table where a citation goes into one of the column headers, namely I put \citet{ref1} into the table.

ref1 has two authors and normally the citation AuthorA and AuthorB (2013) looks fine in the text; however, in the table it is too wide so I was hoping to force biblatex to shorten it to AuthorA et al. (2013).

Is there a way to do that? Note that I do not want to do it document-wide, only within the particular table.

NOTE: Using \citeauthor produces both names.

MWE

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[style=authoryear-comp, natbib=true, backend=biber, sorting=nyt, autolang=hyphen]{biblatex}

\begin{filecontents}{literature.bib}
@ARTICLE{ref1,
  AUTHOR = {AuthorA, A. and AuthorB, B.},
  JOURNALTITLE = {{Journal of Testing}},
  PAGES = {1--2},
  TITLE = {{Test Reference}},
  VOLUME = 1,
  NUMBER = 1,
  YEAR = 2013
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{literature.bib}

\begin{document}

\citet{ref1}

\end{document}

The abbreviation et al. means et alii, which is Latin for and others (plural). Using it for a single co-author doesn't seem right to me. — , Dec 13 '13 at 11:10
@MarcvanDongen: There aren't many ways to shorten the author list so this has to do. — Up-and-coming LaTeX Mastah, Dec 13 '13 at 15:06

karlkoeller · Answer 1 · 2013-12-13T11:04:54.757

8

If you don't need to have natbib=true then the command \citeauthor* does exactly that.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[style=authoryear-comp, backend=biber, sorting=nyt, autolang=hyphen]{biblatex}

\begin{filecontents}{literature.bib}
@ARTICLE{ref1,
  AUTHOR = {AuthorA, A. and AuthorB, B.},
  JOURNALTITLE = {{Journal of Testing}},
  PAGES = {1--2},
  TITLE = {{Test Reference}},
  VOLUME = 1,
  NUMBER = 1,
  YEAR = 2013
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{literature.bib}

\begin{document}

\citeauthor*{ref1} 

\citeauthor{ref1}

\end{document}

Output:

enter image description here

EDIT

For what it's worth, I've discovered that with natbib=true and maxcitenames=1

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[style=authoryear-comp, natbib=true, maxcitenames=1, backend=biber, sorting=nyt, autolang=hyphen]{biblatex}

\begin{filecontents}{literature.bib}
@ARTICLE{ref1,
  AUTHOR = {AuthorA, A. and AuthorB, B.},
  JOURNALTITLE = {{Journal of Testing}},
  PAGES = {1--2},
  TITLE = {{Test Reference}},
  VOLUME = 1,
  NUMBER = 1,
  YEAR = 2013
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{literature.bib}

\begin{document}

\citeauthor*{ref1}

\citeauthor{ref1}

\end{document}

you get

enter image description here

edited Dec 13 '13 at 11:04

answered Dec 13 '13 at 06:39

karlkoeller

124,410

Could the part about natbib compatibility impact on the recent 'is there any downside to this option' question? – Joseph Wright Dec 13 '13 at 07:16
I upvoted the answer because it would have helped, but unfortunately at this stage into the writing process I can no longer give up natbib commands. – Up-and-coming LaTeX Mastah Dec 13 '13 at 07:59
@Up-and-comingLaTeXMastah Thank you. I'll leave the answer, since it could be helpful to someone else. :-) – karlkoeller Dec 13 '13 at 08:14
@Joseph Forgive my poor understanding of English, but I really don't know what you mean – karlkoeller Dec 13 '13 at 09:09
@karlkoeller In your answer here you say 'If you don't need to have natbib=true', so I wondered if there is a link to http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/149313/is-there-a-disadvantage-to-using-natbib-true-with-biblatex/149320? – Joseph Wright Dec 13 '13 at 09:33
@Joseph I'm not sure about full compatibility. \citeauthor (starred and unstarred version) seems to behave the same way but \citet seems not. – karlkoeller Dec 13 '13 at 12:27

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 13 '13 at 07:36

7

The following does the trick:

\AtNextCitekey{\defcounter{maxnames}{1}}\citet{ref1}

answered Dec 13 '13 at 07:36

Oleg Domanov

1,496

+1. This indeed is the right trick. But I wonder why there is not a maxcitenames counter... – karlkoeller Dec 13 '13 at 08:10
Perhaps this could be a feature request. – Oleg Domanov Dec 13 '13 at 09:14

Forcing `et al.` in selected places

MWE

2 Answers2

EDIT

Linked