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I use BibTeX and some authors name begins with an umlaut Ä (written {\"A} in LaTeX). Somewhere on this site I read that BibTex treats Ä the same way as A. Now I wonder because BibTeX orders An before Äl. This is strange, because if one interprets Ä as A or even as Ae, in both cases Äl should be before An. What is happening here? It seems like BibTex simply orders Ä after A, which is in conflict with what I have seen so far.

user148364
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    Welcome to TeX.SE. You wrote, "Somewhere on this [site] I read that BibTeX treats Ä the same way as A." Would you be able to find out where you read this? The reason I ask is this is because the claim is false. Indeed, for sorting purposes, BibTeX treats all accented characters as coming after Z. Hence, not only does BibTeX place Äl after An, it even places it after Zy. For more information on this subject, see How to write “ä” and other umlauts and accented letters in bibliography? – Mico Aug 30 '20 at 23:09
  • Welcome to TeX SX! Did you try with biblatex+biber? Biber understands utf8. – Bernard Aug 30 '20 at 23:10
  • @Mico: No, in my case Äl comes before B. The link you posted in your comment is exactly the reference I was thinking of. Here it says that {\"o} and o are equivalent. – user148364 Aug 30 '20 at 23:14
  • @user148364 -- Please note: The main answer in the posting I provided a link to says that {\"o} and o are equivalent for BibTeX's sorting algorithm. It definitely does not say that ö and o (or, for that matter, Ä and A) are equivalent for BibTeX's sorting algorithm. – Mico Aug 30 '20 at 23:32
  • I thought the first sentence in my question made clear that I produced Ä always with {\"A}. – user148364 Aug 30 '20 at 23:42

1 Answers1

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To demonstrate the claim I made in the earlier comment, that BibTeX sorts Äl not only after An but also after Zy, I've constructed the following minimalist example, which employs four "dummy" bibliographic entries with surnames Äl, {\"A}l, An, and Zy. Note that the Äl entry is sorted dead last, whereas the {\"A}l entry is placed first, as expected.

enter image description here

Again, for a lot more information on how one should enter accented letters in bibliographic entries processed by BibTeX, see How to write “ä” and other umlauts and accented letters in bibliography?

\documentclass{article}

\begin{filecontents}[overwrite]{mybib.bib}
@misc{al,author="Äl",title="Thoughts",year=3001}
@misc{al2,author="{"A}l",title="Thoughts",year=3002}
@misc{an,author="An",title="Thoughts",year=3001}
@misc{zy,author="Zy",title="Thoughts",year=3001}
\end{filecontents}


\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{cite}
\bibliographystyle{plain} 
% Or some other bib style that sorts entries alphabetically by authors' surnames


\begin{document}
\cite{zy,an,al,al2}
\bibliography{mybib}
\end{document}
Mico
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  • Sorry, I think I was not clear enough. I always used {\"A} in my code and never Ä. Still, in the end I get the ordering An, Äl, Zy. – user148364 Aug 30 '20 at 23:40
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    @user148364 - Well, in the answer I provided, the al2 entry (which uses {\"A}l) is placed before the an entry (which uses An). Please edit your posting to provide an MWE that generates the problem behavior you wish to fix. Stating that you're experiencing a problem is not enough to permit coming up a firm diagnosis, let alone to permit suggesting a cure. – Mico Aug 30 '20 at 23:45