BibTeX Changes “U.S” to “U.C.”, How to Correct?

Question

I have noticed that BibTeX will change the initials "U.S." (as in "United States") to "U.C." This has happened using both IEEE and Elsevier document classes, and it works the same with and without punctuation. This happens formatting the citation as either @misc and @techreport (it may also happen with additional formats, but I have not tried).

For example, when attempting to cite

"U.S. Census Bureau"

the output becomes

"U.C. Bureau"

Here's a code sample.

\documentclass[5p]{elsarticle}
\begin{document}

Citation \cite{census:2011}.

\bibliographystyle{elsarticle-num}
\bibliography{bibliography}

\end{document}

with BibTex entry:

@misc{census:2011,
  author        = "U.S. Census Bureau",
  title         = "2010 Census",
  howpublished  = "U.S. Department of Commerce",
  month         = feb,
  year          = "2011",
}

produces:

[1] U. C. Bureau, 2010 census, U.S. Department of Commerce (Feb. 2011).

I can use \verb to force the correct lettering, but the resulting font and font size is different than the surrounding text. How can I correct this in a citation?

Is this some well known inside joke I'm not in on?

Answer 1

BibTeX is likely interpreting U.S. Census Bureau as a personal name, and abbreviating U.S. to U. and Census to C. You need to wrap the whole name in {}:

author = {{U.S. Census Bureau}},