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I'm helping my professor format the citations of one of her papers. The desired format should be in a chicago style, and here is an example: enter image description here

It seems that "biblatex-chicago" package can easily achieve this, and I indeed make it using the following MWE:

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{test.bib}
@article{Mckinsey:2020,
author = {Tracy Nowski and Maisie O'Flanagan and Lynn Taliento},
title = {A Transformative Moment for Philanthropy},
year = {2020},
journal = {McKinsey \& Company Social Sector Practice Paper},
}
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[authordate,giveninits]{biblatex-chicago}
\bibliography{test.bib}


\begin{document}
\cite{Mckinsey:2020}.


\setlength{\bibhang}{0pt}
\printbibliography


\end{document}

However, I need to change the class file to this one RCFS.cls to satisfy the formatting requirements of the journal. But when I did so (just replaced \documentclass{article} with \documentclass{RCFS}), the dots and commas in author names suddenly disappeared. This is what it looks like: enter image description here Does anyone know how to fix this issue? I've been stuck with this for quite a long time. Many thanks!

wyijin
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    Note that most journals cannot accept biblatex submissions because the workflow for biblatex is very different from the usual BibTeX workflow. Double check what the submission guidelines have to say about LaTeX submissions and bibliographies. I would only ever use biblatex for submissions if the journal guidelines explicitly recommend it. Some journals don't actually care about the finer points in the bibliography style as long as the references are complete and more or less consistent. Journal staff will apply the house style before publication. – moewe Apr 08 '22 at 05:48

2 Answers2

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There are some real problems with RCFS.cls. I had to make a couple changes to it just to get it to compile on a modern TeX distribution. It redefines thebibliography even though when used with biblatex, that environment wouldn't even be defined, so it throws an error. It also uses obsolete options for the crop package, which also throws an error.

(It also has misleading comments in it calling itself "report.cls", which of course it isn't.)

But what seems to be relevant here is that it interferes with the defintion of \adddot called by biblatex's \bibinitperiod command.

Adding:

\renewrobustcmd*{\bibinitperiod}{.}

To the end of the preamble should restore the dots (and with them the commas).

It wouldn't surprise me at all if you encountered other problems with that document class. If you got it from the journal, you might ask them for an updated version.

frabjous
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  • The \renewenvironment{thebibliography} is problematic even without biblatex. A LaTeX document class is generally supposed to define thebibliography (it is not defined in the kernel). But this class just redefines it without defining it or loading anything that would define it. This will always error unless one provides a (dummy) definition of thebibliography before loading the class. (Even natbib assumes the class defines thebibliography and uses \renewenvironment.) – moewe Apr 08 '22 at 05:45
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In the mentioned RCFS.cls file, there was a tag

\mathchardef\@m=1500

was there, actually it was the culprit, just remove it and check, nothing problem with biblatex-chicago.sty

MadyYuvi
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    \mathchardef\@m=1500 is a really bad idea. In standard LaTeX \@m is as a convenient abbreviation of 1000. If the class makes \@m 1500 all code that relies on \@m meaning 1000 is bound to break with all sorts of weird consequences. See also https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/558415/35864 and https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/433204/35864. – moewe Apr 08 '22 at 05:39