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up vote 4 down vote favorite

In my .bib file, I have this entry:

@conference{HCS96,
  title={The Virtual Cinematographer: A Paradigm for Automatic Real-time Camera Control and Directing},
  author={Li-wei He and Michael F. Cohen and Davih H. Salesin},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques},
  pages={217--224},
  isbn={0897917464},
  year={1996},
  organization={ACM}
}

When I compile my thesis, I get this entry in the bibliography:

[wei He et al., 1996] wei He, L., Cohen, M. F., and Salesin, D. H. (1996). The virtual cinematographer: A paradigm for automatic real-time camera control and directing. In Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, pages 217–224. ACM.

Why is the name of the first author produced this way?! It should rather be "He et al., 1996". Does anybody know how to fix this problem?

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My general advice for many problems with bibliographies: don't use bibtex, use amsrefs or biblatex instead. – mbork Jul 30 '11 at 11:29
How are amsrefs adn biblatex better than bibtex? – Promather Jul 30 '11 at 13:43
1  
Just a few points: 1. They are both easier to customize (formatting through LaTeX and not .bst files). 2. amsrefs is written entirely in LaTeX, you don't need external programs, just another LaTeX pass. 3. Input syntax is much cleaner in amsrefs (no "and" as a seperator, for example, repeated fields). 4. Multiple bibliographies are very easy in amsrefs. 5. biblatex allows for non-English bibliographies (utf-8, sorting). 6. biblatex allows for "ibid." style of citations. (Disclaimer: I've never used biblatex, I've only skimmed through its documentation.) – mbork Jul 31 '11 at 0:51
Thanks very much for this! – Promather Jul 31 '11 at 14:05
@mbork: while it's true -- as a general proposition -- that amsrefs and biblatex are more versatile and easier to customize than plain ole bibtex, I fail to see the relevance of this observation in the present case (formatting of a name where the given name is hyphenated along with a nonstandard capitalization of part of the given name). – Mico Oct 25 '11 at 9:36
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2 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

Usually, issues with a name in BibTeX can be resolved by enclosing the mistreated part in {}, so if you write your author line like this:

  author={{Li-wei} He and Michael F. Cohen and Davih H. Salesin},

you will be fine. I just tested it on a dummy file with this one fix to your entry, and -- using apalike for my style -- I got this result:

References

[He et al., 1996] He, L., Cohen, M. F., and Salesin, D. H. (1996). The virtual cinematographer: A paradigm for automatic real-time camera control and directing. In Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, pages 217–224. ACM.

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Thanks very much, I tried it and it works! – Promather Jul 30 '11 at 13:43
up vote 5 down vote

Another (tested) solution would be to switch to lastname, firstnames

 author={He, Li-wei and Cohen, Michael F. and Salesin, Davih H.},

This form is generally preferrable whenever you have three names, double-last-names etc.

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Thanks very much for your answer! – Promather Oct 25 '11 at 15:41

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