BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ natbib | Remove Comma from Author-Year Citation Style

[dbernal76]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to write a book in Spanish using the memoir document class, the packages natbib and sectionbib as well as the "econometrica-es" bibliography style. In Spanish you don't always use a comma before "y" (and); the problem is that whenever I cite a document with more than two authors LaTeX shows “(Jones, Baker, y Williams, 1990)". But what I need is “(Jones, Baker y Williams, 1990)", without the comma. I’d appreciate your help.

[kaiserkarl13]

Omitting commas before "and" (or "y") in lists is (unfortunately) done in English as well; it's not a Spanish thing.

You'll have to edit the .bst (actually, make a copy of it under a new name and edit THAT) to get this to happen. There's a function called "format.full.names" that is responsible for this, and you'll have to change the "numnames #2" section from "," to ""; it will read something like this:

Code: Select all

              numnames #2 >
                { "" * }
                'skip$
              if$

There's another called format.names that you might also want to edit.

That said, I really dislike that style of punctuation, in English or otherwise. I died a little inside when the Associated Press changed its style sheet to omit the comma before "and" in lists of three or more.

Don't omit commas: they're really important!