1

I am completely new to publication, and the editor of the journal I am about to publish in is requesting me to make sure that the bibliography follows the so-called Chicago-authordate style. The editor has also shared this link with me. I am trying to make sure that I get the correct style by loading biblatex as follows in my preamble

\usepackage[style=chicago-authordate,backend=biber,natbib,sortcites=true,language=british]{biblatex} % To get a good bibliography

The truth, however, is that I do not know whether my loading of biblatex is sufficient (i.e., correct) to satisfy the editor's needs. Can anybody tell me if I am missing something here?

moewe
  • 175,683
EoDmnFOr3q
  • 2,299

1 Answers1

2

biblatex-chicago is a bit special in the biblatex world. While other styles are usually loaded via \usepackage[style=<style name>]{biblatex}, biblatex-chicago brings its own wrapper package and should be loaded as \usepackage[<style name>]{biblatex-chicago}.

For biblatex-chicago's authordate style you would use

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

\usepackage[authordate, backend=biber]{biblatex-chicago}


\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}


\begin{document}
Lorem \autocite{sigfridsson}


\printbibliography
\end{document}

Note that biblatex implies a very different workflow than BibTeX/thebibliography. Generally speaking you cannot be sure that journals that accept LaTeX submission accept a submission using biblatex. Many publishers that work with LaTeX have their own classes or templates that are usually incompatible with biblatex and are BibTeX/thebibliography-based. Other journals recommend BibTeX or thebibliography. I suggest you contact the editor before you start using biblatex. Of course this is not an issue if the publisher only ever wants PDFs from you, but as soon as they need the source, you need to make sure that they can work with it.

moewe
  • 175,683
  • Thank you very much for your useful answer. Unfortunately, by applying your suggestions, my LaTex compilation generates 93 errors, most (if not all) of them caused because the commands \ciep{} and \citet{} break down... Any clue of what's going on here? EDIT: I have now added: \usepackage[authordate,backend=biber,natbib,sortcites=true]{biblatex-chicago} to my preamble and that seems to make it work just fine. – EoDmnFOr3q May 04 '22 at 19:35
  • 1
    @Hector If you need to use the old natbib names \citet and \citep (instead of \textcite and \parencite), you can indeed use the natbib option to get the compatibility mode. – moewe May 04 '22 at 19:44
  • Thank you for your comment. So, do \textcite{} and \parencite{} achieve the same as \citet{} and \citep{}? Are they better than the ones I'm using? If so, why? – EoDmnFOr3q May 04 '22 at 19:46
  • 1
    @Hector By default biblatex styles usually don't define \citet and \citep. Instead they define \textcite and \parencite for those jobs. Because some users are used to the natbib names \citet and \citep or because they want to have an easier way to switch between natbib and biblatex, biblatex has a natbib compatibility mode that maps \citet or \textcite and \citep to \parencite. It also maps a few other commands (see https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/149313/35864), so I usually avoid it and go for biblatex names directly. – moewe May 04 '22 at 19:51
  • Thank you for your (again) very useful comment. I will leave it with the natbib compatibility mode for now, and will contact the editors to see if they are happy with biblatex. I will then adjust all this according to their answers. – EoDmnFOr3q May 04 '22 at 19:58