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remove long space after initials set in bib file

TeX - LaTeX Asked by cktai on December 18, 2020

Currently, when you cite full given names in biblatex, this will lead to a problem with long spaces for those authors who have initials set in the bib file. It does not occur when the initial is the final item of the given names but it does everywhere else.
Consider the MWE:

documentclass{article}
usepackage[style=verbose]{biblatex}
bibliography{biblatex-examples}
begin{document}
    cite{sarfraz}
end{document}

This will give
enter image description here

As you can see, the space after M. and F. are long spaces and the space after M. and A. are regular spaces. This behaviour seems to happen with verbose, musuos, and windycity styles, so I suspect it is style independent.

I have two questions. 1. How can I prevent biblatex from adding long spaces after initials set in the bib file that are not the final initials in the given name? 2. Would it also be possible to replace them with short spaces?

Giving full names for every entry in the bib file is not an option because that does not coincide with how authors present themselves (for example in the case of K. Maria D. Lane, or H. Floris Cohen). Ideally, I would not have to change every relevant entry in my bib file to something like M. F. A.

One Answer

This problem arises since biblatex does not switch to frenchspacing in citations (but does so in the bibliography, cf. also https://github.com/plk/biblatex/issues/295), so the .s in the name initials are seen by LaTeX as sentence-ending periods which are followed by a larger space.

The problem can be mitigated by adding an explicit isdot to bibnamedelimi

documentclass{article}
usepackage[style=verbose]{biblatex}

renewrobustcmd*{bibnamedelimi}{isdotaddnbspace}

addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

begin{document}
  cite{sarfraz}
end{document}

"M. Sarfraz and M. F. A. Razzak." with equal spaces.

If you want thin spaces within initials, you could try something like

renewrobustcmd*{bibnamedelimi}{addnbthinspace}

Correct answer by moewe on December 18, 2020

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