Unexpected output of \textcite with shorthand

Question

I want to use shorthand to abbreviate the author of a publication. Unfortunately, \textcite doesn't produce the expected output.

MWE:

\begin{filecontents}{myfile.bib}
@book{goossens93,
    author    = "Michel Goossens and Frank Mittelbach and Alexander Samarin",
    title     = "The LaTeX Companion",
    year      = "1993",
    publisher = "Addison-Wesley",
    address   = "Reading, Massachusetts"
}
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}

\usepackage[backend=biber,citestyle=authoryear]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{myfile.bib}

\begin{document}

\cite{goossens93} \\
\parencite{goossens93} \\    
\textcite{goossens93}

\end{document}

Gives the following output, as expected:

Goossens, Mittelbach, and Samarin 1993
(Goossens, Mittelbach, and Samarin 1993)
Goossens, Mittelbach, and Samarin (1993)

When I add shorthand = "GMS" to the BIB entry, the output becomes

GMS
(GMS)
Goossens, Mittelbach, and Samarin (GMS)

but I'd expect \textcite to output something similar as \cite.

Is there a way to fix this?

I neiter want to redefine \textcite globally because there are other references without shorthands which I don't want to break nor do I want to use \cite instead of \textcite to keep the opporunity to drop the shorthand later on.

EDIT: In response to LaRiFaRi's comment: I do want to change \textcite, but only for bib-items that have a shorthand.

MWE2:

\begin{filecontents}{myfile.bib}
@book{goossens93,
    author    = "Michel Goossens and Frank Mittelbach and Alexander Samarin",
    title     = "The LaTeX Companion",
    year      = "1993",
%    shorthand = "GMS"
}

@book{else2015,
    author    = "Someone Else",
    title     = "Interesting thing.",
    year      = "2015"
}
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}

\usepackage[backend=biber,citestyle=authoryear]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{myfile.bib}

\begin{document}

Some guys called \textcite{goossens93} wrote something about LaTeX and \textcite{else2015} also wrote something interesting. 

\end{document}

#1 Output: Some guys called Goossens, Mittelbach, and Samarin (1993) wrote something about LaTeX and Else (2015) also wrote something interesting.

#2 Output with shorthand: Some guys called Goossens, Mittelbach, and Samarin (GMS) wrote something about LaTeX and Else (2015) also wrote something interesting.

#3 Desired output with shorthand: Some guys called GMS wrote something about LaTeX and Else (2015) also wrote something interesting.

Why not globally redefine \textcite for all citations? As I don't want to change how else2015 is cited.

Why not use \cite? As I may change my mind and drop the shorthand field from the BIB file. Then I want the output as in #1 - which I will only get if I don't use \cite instead of \textcite.

Answer 1

You can use

\AtEveryCitekey{\iffieldundef{shorthand}{}{\clearname{labelname}}}

Answer 2

Next project, still using shorthands. As Ulrike's answer perfectly answers the question, I'll leave it marked as accepted. However, in practice that solution creates a new problem: Clearing the field labelname for each citekey that has a shorthand makes it completely impossible to use the normal citation instead of the shorthand where desired.

Therefore, this is an extended answer that draws on Ulrike's approach to

• fix the way \textcite is displayed when there is a shorthand field (I want to see GMS instead of Goossens, Mittelbach, and Samarin (GMS))
• preserve the opportunity to avoid the shorthand.

---

Key to the solution is to use \AtNextCitekey to clear the labelname at each citation instead of doing this globally as in Ulrike's answer.

• To produce a correct shorthand citation, we need \AtNextCitekey{\iffieldundef{shorthand}{}{\clearname{labelname}}}.
• To produce a correct "long" citation, we need to clear the shorthand field as suggested in the second half of this answer: \AtNextCitekey{\clearfield{shorthand}}

To produce shorthand citations by default, I redefined \textcite, drawing on functionality from the xparse package as explained here to deal with multiple optional arguments:

\usepackage{xparse}
\let\oldtextcite\textcite

\DeclareDocumentCommand{\textcite}{ O{} o m }{%
    \AtNextCitekey{\iffieldundef{shorthand}{}{\clearname{labelname}}}%
    \IfNoValueTF{#2}%
        {\oldtextcite[#1]{#3}}%
        {\oldtextcite[#1][#2]{#3}}}

For not having to clutter my document with \AtNextCitekey{\clearfield{shorthand}} commands, I additionally defined \textciteLong:

\DeclareDocumentCommand{\textciteLong}{ O{} o m}{%
    \AtNextCitekey{\clearfield{shorthand}}%
    \IfNoValueTF{#2}%
        {\oldtextcite[#1]{#3}}%
        {\oldtextcite[#1][#2]{#3}}}

I hope this makes using shorthands with authoryear more practical. Below a full example.

---

\begin{filecontents}{myfile.bib}
@book{goossens93,
    author    = "Michel Goossens and Frank Mittelbach and Alexander Samarin",
    title     = "The LaTeX Companion",
    year      = "1993",
    shorthand = "GMS"
}

@book{else2015,
    author    = "Someone Else",
    title     = "Interesting thing.",
    year      = "2015"
}
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}

\usepackage[backend=biber,citestyle=authoryear]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{myfile.bib}

\usepackage{xparse}
\let\oldtextcite\textcite

\DeclareDocumentCommand{\textcite}{ O{} o m }{%
    \AtNextCitekey{\iffieldundef{shorthand}{}{\clearname{labelname}}}%
    \IfNoValueTF{#2}%
        {\oldtextcite[#1]{#3}}%
        {\oldtextcite[#1][#2]{#3}}}
\DeclareDocumentCommand{\textciteLong}{ O{} o m}{%
    \AtNextCitekey{\clearfield{shorthand}}%
    \IfNoValueTF{#2}%
        {\oldtextcite[#1]{#3}}%
        {\oldtextcite[#1][#2]{#3}}}

\begin{document}

\begin{itemize}
    \item Entry without shorthand: \textcite{else2015}
    \item Entry with shorthand: \textcite{goossens93}
    \item Ignore the shorthand: \textciteLong{goossens93}
\end{itemize} 

\end{document}

Output:

• Entry without shorthand: Else (2015)
• Entry with shorthand: GMS
• Ignore the shorthand: Goossens, Mittelbach, and Samarin (1993)