Short titles, Journal abbreviations, etc. in biblatex

Question

I've been making the switch toward using biblatex-chicago to replace an old .bst (now out-dated), but I'm still confused as to how biblatex handles short-forms and abbreviations. For example, when I cite an article from the journal Vetus Testamentum, I want the footnote to use the abbreviation VT, but the bibliography to use the full form. In my old .bst file I used the .bib field shortjournal, but that doesn't seem to be the way biblatex works. Similarly, I would like to be able to abbreviate commonly cited reference works, e.g. Ancient Near Eastern Texts as ANET in my footnotes, and use it's full form in the bibliography.

I'm guessing that this functionality is built into biblatex, I just don't know how to use it.

Answer 1

There are a few different fields you can use:

• shorthand: Replaces the entire citation label. In verbose/"notes" styles, this abbreviation is used after the first citation.

• shorttitle: Replaces title if it appears in the citation label. In verbose/"notes" styles, this abbreviation is used after the first citation.

• shortjournal: Defined in the default data model, but not used in the standard styles or biblatex-chicago.

To incorporate shortjournal in the standard styles, you can modify the journal bibliography macro from biblatex.def in your preamble:

\renewbibmacro*{journal}{%
  \ifboolexpr{ test {\ifcitation} and not test {\iffieldundef{shortjournal}} }
    {\printfield[journaltitle]{shortjournal}}
    {\iffieldundef{journaltitle}
       {}
       {\printtext[journaltitle]{%
          \printfield[titlecase]{journaltitle}%
          \setunit{\subtitlepunct}%
          \printfield[titlecase]{journalsubtitle}}}}}

The biblatex-chicago styles have been tailored to meet the requirements of CMS. They are much more complicated than the standard styles and therefore difficult to modify. The following edit for the journal+sub macro from any one of the package's cbx files should work for most cases:

\renewbibmacro*{journal+sub}{%
  \ifboolexpr{ test {\ifcitation} and not test {\iffieldundef{shortjournal}} }
    {\printfield[journaltitle]{shortjournal}}
    {\iffieldundef{journaltitle}
       {}
       {\printtext[journaltitle]{%
        \printfield[noformat]{journaltitle}%
        \setunit{\addcolon\addspace}%
        \printfield[noformat]{journalsubtitle}}}}}