BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ Frustrations getting the right bibliography style

[Dan]

Hi all,

I've been trying all day to match my dept. citation style for a report, and with very little progress.

Essentially I want author-year citations with an amsalpha-style entry, that is:

[AuthorLastName Year:Page]

and in the bibliography:

[AuthorLastName Year] AuthorLastName, AuthorFirstName, Initials, Year: TitleInItalics (Publisher).

I've got the citations just as I want them using natbib:

Code: Select all

\setcitestyle{authoryear,square,aysep={,},notesep={: }}
...
\citep[PageNumber]{CitationName}

and I've overcome the silly error with the latest version of natbib(before finding that thread), but when I try to use any 'author-year'-like bibliography style, I get the error:

Code: Select all

Runaway argument?
\relax \BR@bibitem {CitationName}\else \BR@bibitem [\protect \citeauthoryear \ETC.
! Paragraph ended before \citeauthoryear was complete.
<to be read again> 
                   \par 

Where citeauthoryear depends on the style I try to use.

This is the first time I've tried to use BibTex using anything but the defaults and it's driving me mad. Is there a way of achieving the format I want?

Thanks!

[phi]

Perhaps you could try using the experimental (but seemingly stable) biblatex package which is extremely customizable. I haven't tested it yet, but I know many people are quite content with it.

[Dan]

Thanks phi. Whilst looking for biblatex documentation and examples I found the custom-bib template which has more-or-less satisfied my requirement