3

I'm having a problem sorting the bibliography in alphabetical order, I'm using natbib, here is a code overview:

\usepackage[round]{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\bibliography{allbiblio/allbiblio}

I'm using TeXnicCenter/MiKTeX distribution, on Windows 7. 

\documentclass[a4paper,french]{book}
%\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} 
%\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} 
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} 
\usepackage[francais]{babel} 
\usepackage{lipsum} 
\usepackage{graphicx} 
\usepackage{float} 
\usepackage{tabularx,booktabs} 
\usepackage{caption} 
\usepackage{wrapfig} 
\usepackage{multirow} 
\usepackage{pdfpages} \usepackage{amsmath,amsfonts,amssymb,amsthm,epsfig,epstopdf,titling,url,array} 
\usepackage[round]{natbib} 
\begin{document} 
\bibliographystyle{plainnat} 
\bibliography{allbiblio/allbiblio} 
\end{document}

And part of file allbiblio.bib: 

@book{c1r1, 
  title={Should we be using learning styles? What research has to say to practice}, 
  author={Coffield, Frank}, 
  year={2004}, 
  publisher={Learning and Skills Research Centre} 
} 

@book{c1r2, 
  title={The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: Form G}, 
  author={Briggs, Katharine Cook and Myers, Isabel Briggs}, 
  year={1977}, 
  publisher={Consulting Psychologists Press} 
} 

@book{c1r3, 
  title={Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development}, 
  author={Kolb, David A}, 
  year={2014}, 
  publisher={FT press} 
}
Mensch
  • 65,388
newuser
  • 31
  • I never used the natbib package with the plainnat style but I guess that the entries are sorted alphabetically by default. It would be easier to help you if you gave us a working example. Which commands did you use to compile your document? – Thorsten Mar 31 '16 at 11:16
  • i've edited the code from your comment into the question. when you have additions to a question, you can always add them there yourself, even if you are new to the site. extended code in comments is very hard to interpret. – barbara beeton Mar 31 '16 at 12:47
  • Any help please? – newuser Apr 02 '16 at 22:14
  • @Thorsten - The natbib package offers the bib styles plainnat, unsrtnat, and abbrvnat. They provide the exact same formatting of bib entries as the venerable styles plain, unsrt, and abbrv do. Relative to the "original" styles, the styles of the natbib package offer two important advantages: (a) one can do authoryear-style and superscript-style citation callouts, and not just numeric-style citation call-outs; and (b) the style files recognize and process additional fields such as url, doi, isbn, and issn. – Mico Sep 03 '16 at 19:13

1 Answers1

2

Well, you asked for "sorting the bibliography in alphabetical order".

If I compile your given code with my current MiKTeX 2.9 distribution, after adding a command \nocite{*} to get a printed bibliography, I get an alphabetical order.

Please see the following MWE (I commented all packages not needed to show the problem):

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@book{c1r1, 
  title={Should we be using learning styles? What research has to say to practice}, 
  author={Coffield, Frank}, 
  year={2004}, 
  publisher={Learning and Skills Research Centre}, 
} 

@book{c1r2, 
  title={The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: Form G}, 
  author={Briggs, Katharine Cook and Myers, Isabel Briggs}, 
  year={1977}, 
  publisher={Consulting Psychologists Press}, 
} 

@book{c1r3, 
  title={Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development}, 
  author={Kolb, David A}, 
  year={2014}, 
  publisher={FT press}, 
} 
\end{filecontents*}


\documentclass[a4paper,french]{book}

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} 
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} 
\usepackage[francais]{babel} 

%\usepackage{lipsum} 
%\usepackage{graphicx} 
%\usepackage{float} 
%\usepackage{tabularx,booktabs} 
%\usepackage{caption} 
%\usepackage{wrapfig} 
%\usepackage{multirow} 
%\usepackage{pdfpages} 
%\usepackage{amsmath,amsfonts,amssymb,amsthm,epsfig,epstopdf,titling,url,array} 
\usepackage[round]{natbib} 


\begin{document}
\nocite{*} % <================================================== missing
\bibliographystyle{plainnat} 
\bibliography{\jobname} % <======= to use bib file created with filecontents
\end{document}

That gives me the following result:

enter image description here

As you can see the entries are sorted: B, C, K

If I missunderstand your question please update your question to clarify your question!

Mensch
  • 65,388
  • Thanks for the answer. I have a similar issue. I was wondering if it would be possible to sort by the first name of the author: David, Frank, Katherine. @Mensch – Maryann Atakpa Apr 21 '21 at 04:57