BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ biblatex-chicago citations in parentheses

[ExecutorElassus]

Hi Forum,

I have Lyx, working on a fairly large document with a lot of citations, using biblatex-chicago, with biber as the backend. In the Document Settings, I have Lyx set to use Natbib with Author-year style. In my preamble, I have the following relevant code:

Code: Select all

\usepackage[notes,natbib,backend=biber,alldates=edtf,idemtracker=context,ibidtracker=context,dateabbrev=false,language=american]{biblatex-chicago}
\renewcommand{\citet}[1]{\autocite{#1}}
\addbibresource{/home/user/bookbib.bib}

At the end of the document I have the link to the .bib file hidden within a Lyx note, followed by \singlespacing and \printbibliography (I was given to understand this is necessary to use biblatex properly, though that was a while ago).

My question is this: In my document, citation entries are all enclosed within parentheses. How can I change this? I'd like it to follow the regular CMS style, in which citations are just plain un-parentheses-enclosed citations.

Do I have something here set up wrong?

Thanks for the help,

EE

[Johannes_B]

You renewed citet to be autocite. Usually, oe would use autocite in the document and tell biblatex what to use for those cites.
Try the biblatex options autocite=plain or autocite=inline.

If this is not helpful, please provide a minimal working example so we can reproduce your issue.

[ExecutorElassus]

There's something more going on here. My main document has a lot of child documents, and some of them have correct citations. I'm going to dig through their respective Document Settings and see if I can track it down.

Stay tuned.

[ExecutorElassus]

Found the issue. The main document is just a container for a lot of child documents, but only the master document has a preamble and the basic formatting stuff. However, since that document's Document Settings profile is also the default, they all get copied over when I create new documents as child documents. My problem was that some of those child documents still had an entry -- in my case, "plainnat" or "natbib" -- in the "Default Style" field under Document Settings --> Bibliography. Also, some children had "numerical" selected in the dropdown next to the Natbib citation style.

Once I cleared the "Default style" entry and set the Natbib style to "author-year," the citations went back to being normal.

I think maybe this is a general issue with Lyx having a page in its Settings for specifying citation styles that can't be left completely blank, yet needing a bunch of stuff custom-input in the preamble to use (as in my case) biblatex-chicago. You get cross-talk if you aren't careful about clearing all that stuff out of child documents, and weird, unexpected behavior if the settings are wrong.

So now I'll go back through all the child documents and make sure their Bibliography sections are properly cleared.

Thanks for forcing me to do some investigation.

Cheers,

EE