Automatically abbreviate authors' first names in LaTeX

latex bibtex citations
TTT picture TTT · Jul 7, 2011 · Viewed 18.8k times · Source

Using natbib/Latex/Bibtex, in the references section I get references with full first names like:

Vladimir Iosifovich Levenshtein. Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions, and reversals. Technical Report 8, 1966.

I would like automatically abbreviated first names like:

V. I. Levenshtein. Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions, and reversals. Technical Report 8, 1966.

If you have an idea how to do this I will be glad to hear.

Answer

Svante picture Svante · Jul 7, 2011

Use a BibTeX style that does this. Alternatively, create your own style by modifying an existing one. You will have to change the function format.names, so that a line similar to this:

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

has f. as shown. The full first name would be shown if it is ff.

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