BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ @MISC entry problems

[cbkschroeder]

Hello,

Thanks for reading my posting.

I am using MikTeX and seem to be having two problems with the output of certain citations. The LaTeX code:

Code: Select all

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage[sort&compress]{natbib}

\setcitestyle{numbers,square}
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}

\begin{document}

Citation 0: \citet{ref00}

Citation 1: \citet{ref01}

Citation 2: \citet{ref02}

\bibliography{test00}

\end{document} 

The BibTeX code:

Code: Select all

@ARTICLE{ref00,
    AUTHOR="{Ref00 Author}",
    JOURNAL="Ref00 Journal",
    PAGES="000--999",
    TITLE="{Ref00 Title}",
    VOLUME=000,
    YEAR=0000,
    }

@MISC{ref01,
    AUTHOR="{Mike's Chemical Company}",
    TITLE="Title 01",
    NOTE="An added note",
    HOWPUBLISHED="Promotional brochure"
    }

@MISC{ref02,
    AUTHOR="{Mike's Chemical Company}",
    TITLE="Title 02",
    NOTE="An added note",
    HOWPUBLISHED="Promotional brochure",
    }

For the output which is generated by my machine from this, please see the attached file "test00.pdf". The BibTex output from this is:

This is BibTeX, Version 0.99d (MiKTeX 2.9)
The top-level auxiliary file: test00.aux
The style file: plainnat.bst
Database file #1: test00.bib
Warning--empty year in ref01
Warning--empty year in ref02
(There were 2 warnings)

My two problems are the following:

1) Why am I being warned that the year is empty? I was under the impression that the year was not a required field in @MISC; and

2) Why am I getting ", ." after the word "Brochure"?

Any answers you could give here would be most appreciated.

Thank you,

Christian

[rsouza01]

Hi. Were you able to solve your problem? I'm using Miktex too and I'm having the ", ," problem, too.

Thanks,

Rodrigo

[frabjous]

I think that the bibliography style you're using expects a year = {...} for @MISC entries and is inserting a blank space where the year ought to be.

[cbkschroeder]

Frabjous's response is on the money, though I initially thought this to be strange behavior since I might have expected there to be some type of compensation for an omitted year. Regardless, I was recently in touch with the package author regarding this in the hopes of getting clarification. He stated that it was OK for me to post, in this forum, his email response to my queries. He stated:

You are getting a warning (not an error) that the year is missing because
plainnat would like a year for all entry types. This makes sense since it is
intended for use with natbib which is really meant for author-year citations,
so any reference without a year poses problems. What is mandatory and
optional is determined by the bib style, not by the BibTeX program. In plain,
the year is optional in misc, but not in plainnat. And you get the comma plus
period because the missing year is supposed to come between them.

If you really only want numerical citations but with other natbib features,
use plain instead of plainnat, even with natbib. You then can only have
numerical citations, and \citet will print question marks in place of the
author name, because plain does not deliver the author names back to the aux
file for natbib to pick up.

Hope this helps a bit.

Best regards,
Patrick

In the end, of the five or six hundred references that I have, two did not have a discernible date. I solved the problem by inserting into the entry:

Code: Select all

YEAR={publication date unknown}

All things considered, that's reasonable information for a reader to have; things have thus resolved to my satisfaction.

Cheers,

Christian