Book edition string for APA style of biblatex in Spanish

Question

I am using the APA style of biblatex for a document written in Spanish. Here is a MWE:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\usepackage[spanish]{babel}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{book,
    author = {Author Name}, 
    year = {2013},
    title = {Title},
    edition = {3},
    address = {City},
    publisher = {Publisher},
}
\end{filecontents}

\usepackage[backend=biber,style=apa]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\DeclareLanguageMapping{spanish}{spanish-apa}

\begin{document}
\autocite{book}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

The MWE produces the following output in the list of references:

Name, A. (2013). Title (3.^a ed.). City: Publisher.

The dot between the number '3' and the superscript 'a' does not make any sense to me and I would like to remove it.

I can change the bib file to get my desired output, with something like this:

edition = {3\textsuperscript{a} ed\adddot},

This produces an output like:

Name, A. (2013). Title (3^a ed.). City: Publisher.

Is there a way to reach this without changing my bib file?

Answer 1

biblatex's Spanish language module uses babel-spanish's \sptext command to typeset the ordinal indicator. According to http://lema.rae.es/dpd/?key=ordinales&lema=ordinales it is a rule in Spanish that the abbreviation dot should be included alongside the superscripted ordinal indicator.

The way to get rid of the dot in all abbreviations typeset with superscripted endings would be to redefine \sptext. The following MWE locally redefines \sptext for biblatex.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[spanish]{babel}

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

\DefineBibliographyExtras{spanish}{%
  \savecommand\sptext
  \renewcommand*{\sptext}{\textsuperscript}}

\UndefineBibliographyExtras{spanish}{%
  \restorecommand\sptext}

\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{book,
  author    = {Author Name}, 
  year      = {2013},
  title     = {Title},
  edition   = {3},
  address   = {City},
  publisher = {Publisher},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
\autocite{book}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Note that current versions of biblatex and biblatex-apa don't need the \DeclareLanguageMapping any more, so I dropped it.

---

If this should be only about the edition and all other ordinals and abbreviations should not be touched you could try only

\DefineBibliographyExtras{spanish}{%
  \def\mkbibordedition#1{\stripzeros{#1}\textsuperscript{a}}}

---

If you want to influence all ordinal numbers, you would use

\DefineBibliographyExtras{spanish}{%
  \protected\def\mkbibmascord#1{\stripzeros{#1}\textsuperscript{o}}%
  \protected\def\mkbibfemord#1{\stripzeros{#1}\textsuperscript{a}}}