How do I modify @misc entry to allow for no year-field?

Question

I want to cite various legal documents. It is fine to put all info in the title field. The document tend to have their date and year in the title so if I put something year field the date will be printed double. However, if I leave it empty I get "(n.d.)" at the end of the footnote and bibliography entry. If I put year={{}}, I get a space before the final dot of the footnote and two parenthesis at the end of the printed bibliography entry.

I've seen some similar questions but I didn't get anything to work. I'm using biblatex with backend=biber, style=authoryear.

Welcome to TeX.se. The best solution is to make a new type for these things. See How can I create entirely new data types with BibLaTeX/Biber? for an extensive tutorial on how to do this. For a simpler example, see Creating Entry in Bibtex for Executive Orders. — Alan Munn, Jan 07 '19 at 19:33
In the same vein as Alan Munn's comment, this answer may also be useful: How to set up BibLaTeX for use with 'freeform' citations. — gusbrs, Jan 07 '19 at 19:38
Just repeating Alan's links because they for some reason don't appear in the linked column: https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/175776/, https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/98512/ — moewe, Jan 07 '19 at 20:53

moewe · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-07T21:00:22.493

It is possible to disable the 'n.d'/nodate behaviour either globally for all entry types or only for specific types with \DeclareLabeldate. The default definition

\DeclareLabeldate{%
  \field{date}
  \field{year}
  \field{eventdate}
  \field{origdate}
  \field{urldate}
  \literal{nodate}
}

writes 'n.d.' when none of the dates listed before is found. If you drop the \literal{nodate} from the definition, there won't be a 'n.d.'. In the MWE below the 'n.d.' is only dropped for @misc entries, all other types retain the default definition and therefore retain the 'n.d.' if no date is given (cf. the applebly @book).

\documentclass[british]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}

\usepackage[style=authoryear, backend=biber]{biblatex}

\DeclareLabeldate[misc]{%
  \field{date}
  \field{year}
  \field{eventdate}
  \field{origdate}
  \field{urldate}
}

\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{appleby,
  author  = {Humphrey Appleby},
  title   = {On the Importance of the Civil Service},
}
@misc{law,
  title  = {Law Act 1980},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}


\begin{document}
\cite{sigfridsson,appleby,law}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

If you cite more legal documents, you may want to look into fleshing out the available types @legal, @legislation and @jurisdiction that are treated as aliases for @misc by the standard styles. See also What is best practice re. handling legal sources with Biblatex/Biber for disciplines other than law?.

How do I modify @misc entry to allow for no year-field?

1 Answers1