BibTeX alpha long keys cause indentation of entry [closed]

Question

I'm using BibTeX with the alpha style to keep track of my references. Whenever there is an entry with 4 or more authors, the entry id composed of their names and publication years causes the first line of the entry to be indented, thereby messing up the alignment of the whole entry.

What's the best way to fix this?

Answer 1

Many Bibtex styles support control over indentation using the bibhang dimension, although I haven't found an alphanumeric style that supports it.

The code below shows how support for \bibhang can be added to vanilla Bibtex, so that it can be used with alpha.bst.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

%% Absurd indent to show off what is happening
\newlength\bibhang
\setlength\bibhang{9em} 

\bibliographystyle{alpha}

%%Redefine \bibitem to ensure bibhang is used

%%This could conflict with packages that want %%to change these parameters
\def\setbibindent{
\setlength{\itemindent}{-\bibhang}
    \setlength{\itemsep}{0pt}
    \setlength{\parsep}{0pt}
    \setlength{\leftmargin}{\bibhang}}
\let\urbibitem=\bibitem
\def\bibitem{\setbibindent\urbibitem}

\begin{document}

Some text.

\nocite[*]

\bibliography{examplebib}

\end{document}