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I'm writing my thesis in LaTeX. Please see my MWE below.

\documentclass{book}

\usepackage[alldates=short,style=chem-rsc]{biblatex}
\usepackage[UKenglish]{babel}
\usepackage{glossaries}

\begin{document}

\end{document}

This code repeatedly gives

"Error: missing \endcsname inserted. \begin{document}" 
"Error: extra \endcsname. \begin{document}".

Background:

I recently realised that my online references were displaying the date accessed in the US format (i.e. mm/dd/yyyy). I want them in UK format (dd/mm/yyyy), so I found this question which suggested I should load babel with the british option - I had a look at the package documentation and decided to use UKenglish.

This fixed my urldate problem, but gave me "Error: missing \endcsname inserted. \begin{document}" and "Error: extra \endcsname. \begin{document}" over and over again.

I have also tried loading biblatex first, followed by glossaries, then babel. This gives me "Error: Undefined control sequence. \begin{document}".

The error goes away when I get rid of glossaries or babel. Is there an incompatibility between the two packages that I don't know about? Is there a way I could solve my urldate problem without using babel?

jjdb
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    Welcome to TeX.SE! Thanks for providing the MWE. Are you sure it is an example though? On my computer, running the above example gives no errors. – ShreevatsaR May 10 '17 at 14:22
  • One thing to check: do you have any files named book, biblatex, babel or glossaries in your current directory (or somewhere TeX may be finding it)? – ShreevatsaR May 10 '17 at 14:23
  • Welcome to TeX.SX! You can have a look at our starter guide to familiarize yourself further with our format. I'll edit a part of your question to accommodate for that. – jjdb May 10 '17 at 14:27
  • @ShreevatsaR that's odd, I get the error when I run the MWE I provided. there aren't any strange files in my directory, and I'm not sure where else TeX might be getting them from... – gldraper May 10 '17 at 14:31
  • @gldraper That's strange. You can try providing the entire output leading up to the error message(s), and maybe also the .log file (which will contain similar output). – ShreevatsaR May 10 '17 at 14:34
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    You can find the .log file here. Errors start at line 577. – gldraper May 10 '17 at 14:45
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    Searching for that error message (`! Missing \endcsname inserted. \bbl@loaded l.9 \begin{document} `) leads to [this question](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/292269/errors-but-correct-pdf-biblatex-with-biber-glossaries-and-babel), which was solved by updating `babel`. Might that work for you too? – ShreevatsaR May 10 '17 at 14:55
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    Your babel dates back to 2008, while biblatex is up to date. Make in update in both Admin an User mode. babel is installed in Admin mode. But it is not a bad idea to also update in User mode. Please run each of the updaters twice. – moewe May 10 '17 at 16:05
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    @ShreevatsaR @moewe Thanks for the help. Updating babel in Admin mode fixed my issue! – gldraper May 11 '17 at 09:59
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it was caused by a horribly outdated version of babel. Updating fixed the problem. – moewe May 12 '17 at 09:06

0 Answers0