BibTeX Format Description

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="application/xhtml+xml; charset=iso-8859-1"/> <title>BibTeX Format Description</title> <meta name="robots" content="index, follow"/> <meta name="author" content="Alexander Feder"/> <meta name="keywords" lang="en" content="BibTeX, Bibliography, Format, Format Description, Alexander Feder"/> <meta name="description" lang="en" content="A detailed description of the BibTeX Format."/> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../css/style.css"/> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="../js/prototype.js"></script>  </head> <body> <div id="alles"> <div id="kopf"> <h1 id="logo"><a href="../"><span>BibTeX</span></a></h1> <div id="sprachen"> <a href=""><img class="lang_selected" src="../css/img/flags/flag_en.gif" border="0" title="en" alt="en"/></a> <a href="de/"><img src="../css/img/flags/flag_de.gif" border="0" title="de" alt="de"/></a> </div> <div id="menu"> <ul> <li><a href="../">Home</a></li> <li><a href="../Convert/">Convert</a></li> <li><a href="">Format</a></li> <li><a href="../Using/">Using</a></li> <li><a href="../SpecialSymbols/">Special Symbols</a></li> <li><a href="../About/">About</a></li> <li><a href="../Links/">Links</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> <div id="content"> <h2 class="themen">BibTeX Format Description</h2> <div class="absatz"> BibTeX-files may contain four different types of entries: <ul><li><b>@STRING</b> defines abbreviations in the form of<br/> <pre class="snippet"> @string { foo = "Mrs. Foo" } </pre> which can later be used in a tag like this <pre class="snippet"> author = foo # " and Mr. Bar" </pre> </li> <li><b>@PREAMBLE</b> defines how special text should be formatted.</li> <li><b>@COMMENT</b> for comments not taken in regard by BibTeX.</li> <li><b>Entries</b> each declaring a single reference to a type of publication, for example:<b>@article</b>, <b>@book</b>, <b>@inproceedings</b> etc.</li></ul><br/><br/> <p>A BibTeX entry consists of the type (the word after @), a citation-key and a number of tags which define various characteristics of the specific BibTeX entry.</p> <p>Among those tags can be for example: author, title, year, etc. Some tags are mandatory for certain types of BibTeX entries, some are optional.</p> <p>There is a set of standard-tags existing, which can be interpreted by BibTeX or third-party tools. Those which are unknown are ignored by BibTeX, thus can be used to store additional information without interfering with the final outcome of a document. </p> <pre class="snippet"> @misc{ patashnik-bibtexing, author = "Oren Patashnik", title = "BIBTEXing", year = "1988" } </pre> </div> <h2 class="themen">Tags</h2> <div class="absatz"> <p>A BibTeX tag is specified by its name followed by an equals-sign and the content. The tag's name is not case-sensitive. The content needs to be enclosed by either curly braces or quotation-marks. Which form of enclosure is used is depending on the user's taste, and both can be applied together in a single BibTeX entry, but there is one difference between those two methods: When quotation-marks are used, string concatenation using # is possible, but not when braces are used.</p> <br/><br/> <p>For example, the following statements are equal:</p> <pre class="snippet"> Title = {{Bib}\TeX} Title = "{Bib}\TeX" Title = "{Bib}" # "\TeX" </pre> <p>It is important to know that abbreviations previously defined using the @string command can only be used in conjunction with other strings using the string concatenation.</p> <pre class="snippet"> @string{btx = "{\textsc{Bib}\TeX}"} Title = btx # "ing" </pre> <p>Numbers can either be enclosed by braces or quotation-marks, but can stand alone. Tags are separated by commas; if not, the BibTeX parser will produce an error. The last tag can be finished with a comma, although not necessarily.</p> <pre class="snippet"> @article{mrx05, auTHor = "Mr. X", Title = {Something Great}, publisher = "nob" # "ody", YEAR = 2005, } </pre> <p>is a correct BibTeX entry.</p> </div> </div> <br/><br/> </div> <center><small> <span id="Copyright"><a href="http://www.alexanderfeder.com"> © 2006 Alexander Feder</a></span> </small></center> </body> </html>

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BibTeX Format Description