Bold citation number

Question

Is there a straightforward way to produce bold citation numbers with the \cite command (I'm using amsplain bibliography style)? Essentially I want something like this: [1] rather than [1].

Answer 1

Assuming you're not using any packages that modify \cite: The \@cite@ofmt macro is responsible for the typeset form of the citations; its default definition is \hbox. Changing it to \bfseries\hbox seems to have the desired effect.

\documentclass{article}

\makeatletter
\renewcommand*{\@cite@ofmt}{\bfseries\hbox}
\makeatother

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@misc{A01,
  author = {Author, A.},
  year = {2001},
  title = {Alpha},
}
@misc{B02,
  author = {Buthor, B.},
  year = {2002},
  title = {Bravo},
}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}

Some text \cite{A01,B02}.

\bibliographystyle{amsplain}
\bibliography{\jobname}

\end{document}

EDIT: If you're using the cite package, \renewcommand{\citeform}[1]{\textbf{#1}} does the trick.