9

I need to change the format of citations for my bibliography items to look like:

"See Reference (a)" instead of "See Reference (1)"

I have used code like: \renewcommand\@cite[1]{Reference~(#1)} in my style file.

Then, in my actual document I would have: "See \cite{somebibitem}" which results in "See Reference (1)".

But how do I get my bibliography list to use alpha characters instead of numeric (which I assume would change the citation to use alpha as well)?

lockstep
  • 250,273
John
  • 91
  • Welcome to TeX.SX! May you tell what method you're using for the bibliography? – egreg Dec 24 '11 at 18:10
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    Usually, we don't put a greeting or a "thank you" in our posts. While this might seem strange at first, it is not a sign of lack of politeness, but rather part of our trying to keep everything very concise. Upvoting is the preferred way here to say "thank you" to users who helped you. A tip: You can use backticks ``` to mark your inline code as I did in my edit. – egreg Dec 24 '11 at 18:12

3 Answers3

17

The article document class and most other document classes I'm familiar with use the counter enumiv to number the items in the thebibliography environment. To "format" this counter for bibliographic labels, LaTeX by default employs the instruction \@arabic\c@enumiv in two instances in the definition of the thebibliography environment.

Hence, to change the numbering style of the labels from arabic (1, 2, 3, ...) to alph (a, b, c, ...), you could do a redefinition of the thebibliography environment in your document's preamble. Both instances of \@arabic have to be changed to \@alph. In addition, it's necessary to redefine two further macros, \@bibitem (because in its default definition it is hard-coded to use arabic-style numbers) and \biblabel (to change the delimiters around the bib labels from square brackets to round parentheses in the bibliography section).

\makeatletter
\renewcommand\@bibitem[1]{\item\if@filesw \immediate\write\@auxout
   {\string\bibcite{#1}{\theenumiv}}\fi\ignorespaces}
     %% to replace "\the\value{\@listctr}" with "\theenumiv"
\renewcommand\@biblabel[1]{(#1)}
     %% to replace "[#1]" with "(#1)"

\renewenvironment{thebibliography}[1]
     {\section*{\refname}%  %% use \bibname instead of \refname if using the 
                            %% report or book document classes
      \@mkboth{\MakeUppercase\refname}{\MakeUppercase\refname}%
      \list{\@biblabel{\@alph\c@enumiv}}% %% instead of "\@arabic\c@enumiv"
           {\settowidth\labelwidth{\@biblabel{#1}}%
            \leftmargin\labelwidth
            \advance\leftmargin\labelsep
            \@openbib@code
            \usecounter{enumiv}%
            \let\p@enumiv\@empty
            \renewcommand\theenumiv{\@alph\c@enumiv}}% 
                                    %% instead of "\@arabic\c@enumiv"
      \sloppy
      \clubpenalty4000
      \@clubpenalty \clubpenalty
      \widowpenalty4000%
      \sfcode`\.\@m}
    {\def\@noitemerr
       {\@latex@warning{Empty `thebibliography' environment}}%
      \endlist}
\makeatother

Finally, to change the delimiters of the citation "numbers" (now: letters!) in the text of the document from square brackets to round parentheses, I recommend you employ the cite package and issue the following commands (still in the preamble, naturally):

\usepackage{cite}
\renewcommand{\citeleft}{(}
\renewcommand{\citeright}{)}

Happy LaTeXing!

Mico
  • 506,678
  • Thanks! I tried the very first solution (put the code in my style file), but ended up with two unexpected results: First, the references in the bibliography had [a] (or [b], etc.) instead of (a), (b), etc. Second, the citations appeared as (1), (2) instead of (a) and (b). Is there more that I need to do? – John Dec 25 '11 at 00:01
  • John, it turns out that it's also necessary to redefine two additional macros, \@bibitem (to make the citation "numbers" show up as letters in the text) and \@biblabel (to use parentheses around the bib labels in the bibliography. I've added the required code in the example code, immediately after the makeatletter instruction. – Mico Dec 25 '11 at 04:05
  • My apologies. I thought I had made that change. Everything seems to be working now. Thanks for all the suggestions. – John Dec 25 '11 at 15:06
  • This is not so much an answer, as a question for Mico (I'm too new to post comments). First of all, thank you for the very helpful answer. I find that when using the \cite package as you suggested, the [compress] option no longer works, and the citations appear like some text (a,b,c,d) rather than some text (a-d) If you have any thoughts on how to restore the functionality of the compress option, I would greatly appreciate the help. Thank you. – Reid McCargar Oct 21 '14 at 14:13
  • @ReidMcCargar - My apologies: I only came across your comment from long ago this morning. Did you manage to resolve the issue, or is it still open? Please advise. – Mico Feb 12 '17 at 08:31
11

Here's a solution using biblatex. Note that the 27th reference will be labeled as "aa" and the 702th reference (the highest possible number) as "zz".

EDIT: I added some code to change the brackets to parentheses for the bibliography and the most common citation commands. A full solution would involve additional redefinitions.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{biblatex}

\DeclareFieldFormat{labelnumber}{\mknumalph{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat{labelnumberwidth}{\mkbibparens{#1}}

\DeclareCiteCommand{\cite}[\mkbibparens]
  {\usebibmacro{prenote}}
  {\usebibmacro{citeindex}%
   \usebibmacro{cite}}
  {\multicitedelim}
  {\usebibmacro{postnote}}

\DeclareCiteCommand{\parencite}[\mkbibparens]
  {\usebibmacro{prenote}}
  {\usebibmacro{citeindex}%
   \usebibmacro{cite}}
  {\multicitedelim}
  {\usebibmacro{postnote}}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@misc{A01,
  author = {Author, A.},
  year = {2001},
  title = {Alpha},
}
@misc{B02,
  author = {Buthor, B.},
  year = {2002},
  title = {Bravo},
}
@misc{C03,
  author = {Cuthor, C.},
  year = {2003},
  title = {Charlie},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}

Some text \autocite{A01,B02,C03}.

\printbibliography

\end{document}

enter image description here

lockstep
  • 250,273
0

I think that having references with (a) format has no sense (you can cite only 26 reference, as the alphabet number is 26) but instead you can use the alpha style :

\bibliographystyle{alpha}

this command to be added just before the end of your document :

\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{bibliographie} // your biblio file
\end{document}

All styles can be found here : https://fr.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Bibtex_bibliography_styles

Good luck

El Houcine
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