Using \renewcommand to change the References name is not working

Question

I am creating a dissertation style document in LaTeX and am required to use the universities layout which is a premade code I have saved and added in to my premable. At the moment the title for the bibliography reads 'Reference' but I want it to read 'Bibliography'. I have seen other pages on here that tell you to add in this line

\renewcommand{\bibname}{Bibliography}

which I have done but it has not changed anything for me. Below is the code I have used, have I done anything wrong? Is there a command I need to add into the bibliography itself?

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{report}
\renewcommand{\bibname}{Bibliography}
\begin{document}

\begin{thebibliography}{99}


    \bibitem{derbyshire} J. Derbyshire.{\em Unknown Quantity}, Atlantic, London (2007).

\end{thebibliography}

\end{document}

If I add \begin{document} to your code, then it works fine. The renewcommand works to replace the name of the bibliography, which is not really necessary in the example, as "Bibliography" is already the default value. Can you make a small example, that shows your problem? — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Mar 16 '17 at 16:58
Sorry that's a mistake on my behalf, I do have \begin{document} I'll change it now. It doesn't work because I'm using a package for a layout. So how can I force it to change? — harry55, Mar 16 '17 at 17:04
A good start would be to tell us the name of the package that prevents it from working. Maybe something with babel? We cannot read minds :) — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Mar 16 '17 at 17:05
It is a package my university has created which allows you to fill in details and produces pages like the declaration automatically. It is called bbkproject but I dont think this will help you as it is just the name for the file that my uni has created for me to insert into the project — harry55, Mar 16 '17 at 17:09
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/ems/faculty/hart/latex-resources this one? — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Mar 16 '17 at 17:14
@Johannes_B Templates are great. Whenever I'm in doubt if the latex code in my own document is to messy, randomly opening a template will most probably convince me that my own document is fantastic and does not need to be cleaned up :) — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Mar 17 '17 at 14:52

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 16 '17 at 17:15

2

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{report}
\usepackage{bbkproject}

\makeatletter
\gdef\@bibname{Bla}
\makeatother


\begin{document}


\begin{thebibliography}{99}


    \bibitem{derbyshire} J. Derbyshire.{\em Unknown Quantity}, Atlantic, London (2007).

\end{thebibliography}

\end{document}

answered Mar 16 '17 at 17:15

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

158,329

Okay this works, thank you! Would you mind just explaining to me what \makeatletter does and \makeatother? And do you know why my way wasn't working? – harry55 Mar 16 '17 at 17:24
1

@harry55 \makeatletter makes @ a letter, which is necessary if you want to use @ in your preamble. As to why your way was not working: this is simply because the package you are using seems to be quite a mess and the name was defined there like this ... – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Mar 16 '17 at 17:28
@harry55 see http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/8351/what-do-makeatletter-and-makeatother-do – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Mar 16 '17 at 17:31
\makeatletter \gdef\@bibname{Bla} \makeatother did not work with the documentclass article – Black Mild Apr 20 '20 at 05:43

Using \renewcommand to change the References name is not working

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