BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ biblatex | Seemingly inconsistent Name Formats

[jmcLC]

Hi All,

I recently started using biblatex (my installation is TeX Live 2010). My preamble syntax is:

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\usepackage[backend=bibtex,style=authoryear]{biblatex}

When I cite a source with two authors, the bibliography entry prints the author names using an inconsistent format. For instance, suppose my .bib file entry is:

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@book{Abramowitz,
author = "Abramowitz, M. and Stegun, I.",
title  = "Handbook of Mathematical Functions",
publisher = {Dover Publications},
year = "1965" }

If I issue the command \parencite{Abramowitz} in my document, the bibliography entry prints as:

Abramowitz, M. and I. Stegun (1965). Handbook of Mathematical Functions. Dover Publications.

Notice that the name format used for the 1st author is inconsistent with that used for the 2nd author. The 1st author is printed using Last Name First format, but the 2nd author is printed using Last Name Last format. What I want is for the entry to print like this:

Abramowitz, M. and Stegun, I. (1965). Handbook of Mathematical Functions. Dover Publications.

How do I get biblatex to do what I want? Is this inconsistency a known biblatex Bug?

Any help would be much appreciated.


Thanks in advance,
Jerry

[cgnieder]

Hi Jerry,

welcome to the LaTeX community!

How do I get biblatex to do what I want? Is this inconsistency a known biblatex Bug?

I don't think this is a bug but a deliberate decision. There is an easy way out if you don't like it:

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\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[backend=bibtex,style=authoryear]{biblatex}
\DeclareNameAlias{sortname}{last-first}% <= this is the key here!
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

% for having a self-contained example:
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{Abramowitz,
author = "Abramowitz, M. and Stegun, I.",
title  = "Handbook of Mathematical Functions",
publisher = {Dover Publications},
year = "1965" }
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}

\cite{Abramowitz}
\printbibliography

\end{document}

BTW, biblatex has lots more possibilities when used with biber as backend (name disambiguation, just to mention one)

my installation is TexLive 2010

You are aware that this is already quite outdated, I suppose? (The last biblatex update which is in my TL 2012 installation is from Jan 10th 2013!)

Regards

[cgnieder]

For everyone as information: this question has also been asked on TeX.sx where it has gotten the exact same answer...

[jmcLC]

Hi Clemens,

Thanks for your suggestion. And as you've correctly noted, I posted the same query at stackexchange, where I got essentially the same reply. The suggested fixes don't work, but they come very close to working. After incorporating your suggestion, my preamble syntax now reads:

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\usepackage[style=authoryear]{biblatex}
\DeclareNameAlias{sortname}{last-first}
\bibliography{mybibs}

The bibligraphy entry now prints both authors in Last Name First format, which is great, but now erroneous repetitions of the author intials are appearing. The bibliography entry now prints as:

AbramowitzA.M.M.StegunS.I.I. (1965). Handbook of Mathematical Functions. Dover Publications.

Can you think of any reason why these repeated initials are occuring? Your working example involved the use of \documentclass{article}, whereas my actual preamble uses \documentclass[12pt,final,letterpaper]{book}. Also, my preamble syntax uses \bibliography{mybibs} instead of \addbibresource{\jobname.bib}. Maybe these differences cause the fix to fail?

Again, I appreciate your reply, and it does come close to solving the problem. Re your reply to my other post (about the \RN command conflict), I'll take your advice and have the text editor do a search-and-replace.

Jerry

[cgnieder]

Your working example involved the use of \documentclass{article}, whereas my actual preamble uses \documentclass[12pt,final,letterpaper]{book}. Also, my preamble syntax uses \bibliography{mybibs} instead of \addbibresource{\jobname.bib}. Maybe these differences cause the fix to fail?

These differences should not at all have any effect. I used article because it's the standard class for minimal working examples. However, the book class doesn't make any definitions differently from article that could possibly effect biblatex.

The command \jobname holds the name of the file compiled with latex without the extension. That way I could use one file containing both the source and the bib file at once. Other than that there is no difference.

\addbibresource is the recommended biblatex way for inputting bibliography files but again \bibliography also works and should in no way have effects on the appearance of the bibliography style.

Conclusion: please post a complete minimal working example that shows the issue. Before you do that copy my example and compile it. If it also shows the erroneous behavior this is probably a version issue and you should update.

Regards (and good night, it's late on this half of the globe)