Placing a line break within a biblatex entry

Question

I am using biblatex with Biber as the backend. I am struggling with overfull hboxes in my bibliography.

In the following image, "Dispersion Forces" sticks out past the margin. I would like to place a line break at the position marked by the red vertical line, even though doing so will likely cause an underfull hbox. How can I do this?

Here is some code, though it is not compilable; I don't have a MWE because I'm not sure how to reproduce the "(196)" without including 196 biblatex entries.

% .tex file:
\usepackage[semibold,tt=false]{libertine}
\usepackage{libertinust1math}
\usepackage[
  expansion = false ,
  tracking = smallcaps ,
  letterspace = 40 ,
  final
]{microtype}
\usepackage[style=chem-acs,articletitle=true,chaptertitle=true,refsection=chapter,maxbibnames=99,maxcitenames=99,doi=true,defernumbers=true]{biblatex}
\documentclass[oneside,11pt,draft]{book}
\begin{document}
\end{document}
% .bib file:
@ARTICLE{Trulsson2010,
  author = {Trulsson, Martin and Algotsson, Jenny and Forsman, Jan and Woodward, Clifford E.},
  title = {Differential Capacitance of Room Temperature Ionic Liquids: The Role of Dispersion Forces},
  journal = {J. Phys. Chem. Lett.},
  year = {2010},
  volume = {1},
  pages = {1191--1195}
}

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 09 '21 at 19:59

The simplest way to manually insert a line break in a field content in the bibliography is to write \\ into the .bib entry. Of course this is not a very sustainable solution, since .bib files are supposed to be re-usable and this is a very situation-dependent fix. In general I would advise against putting those kind of ad hoc fixes into the .bib file because they could come back and bite you in different situations.

Even though I wouldn't recommend it, the following certainly works

\documentclass[oneside,11pt,draft]{book}
\usepackage[semibold,tt=false]{libertine}
\usepackage{libertinust1math}
\usepackage[
  expansion=false,
  tracking=smallcaps,
  letterspace= 40,
  final
]{microtype}
\usepackage[style=chem-acs,
  maxbibnames=99, maxcitenames=99,
  articletitle=true, chaptertitle=true,
  doi=true,
  defernumbers=true,
  refsection=chapter,
]{biblatex}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@ARTICLE{Trulsson2010,
  author  = {Trulsson, Martin and Algotsson, Jenny
             and Forsman, Jan and Woodward, Clifford E.},
  title   = {Differential\Capacitance of Room Temperature
             Ionic Liquids: The Role of Dispersion Forces},
  journal = {J. Phys. Chem. Lett.},
  year    = {2010},
  volume  = {1},
  pages   = {1191--1195}
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
% to fake the labelnumber
\DeclareFieldFormat{labelnumberwidth}{\mkbibparens{196}}
\begin{document}
\cite{Trulsson2010}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Instead I would try to get rid of the overful box by using one of the methods discussed in How to adjust the breaking in the bibliography?.

In this example a bit of \emergencystretch helps (.1em is enough here).

\documentclass[oneside,11pt,draft]{book}
\usepackage[semibold,tt=false]{libertine}
\usepackage{libertinust1math}
\usepackage[
  expansion=false,
  tracking=smallcaps,
  letterspace= 40,
  final
]{microtype}
\usepackage[style=chem-acs,
  maxbibnames=99, maxcitenames=99,
  articletitle=true, chaptertitle=true,
  doi=true,
  defernumbers=true,
  refsection=chapter,
]{biblatex}
\appto\bibfont{\setlength{\emergencystretch}{.1em}}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@ARTICLE{Trulsson2010,
  author  = {Trulsson, Martin and Algotsson, Jenny
             and Forsman, Jan and Woodward, Clifford E.},
  title   = {Differential Capacitance of Room Temperature
             Ionic Liquids: The Role of Dispersion Forces},
  journal = {J. Phys. Chem. Lett.},
  year    = {2010},
  volume  = {1},
  pages   = {1191--1195}
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
% to fake the labelnumber
\DeclareFieldFormat{labelnumberwidth}{\mkbibparens{196}}
\begin{document}
\cite{Trulsson2010}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

But if you have many tricky references, setting the bibliography ragged right might be a better option.

Placing a line break within a biblatex entry

1 Answers1