BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ Bibliography showing full first name

[squidgy_wiji]

Hey I am new to Latex.

My bibliography style in my report is {amsplain}. When I look at my bibliography I noticed that first name appear before the last name. Furthermore the full first name appears rather than the initial.

Is it possible to change this so it is just the last name of the author and the initials of the other names such that the last name is before the initial. Can this be done simply by altering the style or will I have to go into the Xbib file and manually change each entry.

Kind Regards

[jjcanada]

I have the same problem, does nobody know a solution??? It should be a typical problem, I guess...

[olofos]

This is due to the amsplain style. I haven't actually used that style so I don't know what features it provides and if these are easily found in an other style which formats names differently. If you want to use amsplain but write out only the initials it's necessary to make a small change to amsplain.bst. First make a copy of amsplain.bst using some other filename. In this new file find the line

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FUNCTION {format.names}

a few lines into this function you will find

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    { s nameptr "{ff~}{vv~}{ll}{, jj}" format.name$ 't :=

Change this to

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    { s nameptr "{f.~}{vv~}{ll}{, jj}" format.name$ 't :=

This should produce an initial followed by a dot and then the family name. If want the initial after the family name, instead change the line to

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    { s nameptr "{vv~}{ll}{, f.~}{, jj}" format.name$ 't :=

[josephwright]

Remember to make a copy of the .bst file with a new name before altering it. amsplain formats things a particular way, and it's asking for trouble to modify a local copy without a different name.