thebibliography environment printing cite key

Question

Using the basic bibliography environment, when I have

\begin{thebibliography}
\bibitem{key01}
Beeblbrox, Zaphod, Galactic University Press
etc. etc.`
\end{thebibliography}

For some reason it prints the key in the document. So in the final document bibliography I end up with

key01 Galactic University Press etc. etc.

How can I prevent that key01 from ending up in the final document? I believe I'm following the instructions for the bibliography and cite usage on the Latex wiki to a t.

Also I'm ending up with a "[?]" where the citation is supposed to be. It's not working how it the latex wiki seems to say it should work for some reason.

Answer 1

Without a minimal example one can only guess, but the thebibliography environment needs a mandatory argument that determines the width of the widest label.

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

Some text \cite{key01}.

\begin{thebibliography}{9}% 2nd arg is the width of the widest label.
\bibitem{key01}
Beeblebrox, Zaphod, Galactic University Press
etc. etc.`
\end{thebibliography}

\end{document}

BTW, you misspelled "Beeblebrox". ;-)

Answer 2

From a study of your code snippet, it appears you may have inadvertently left off the mandatory argument of the \begin{thebibliography}{xx}, where xx is the width of the widest label. E.g., if you have up to 9 references, you should specify 9; if you have up to 99 references, you should specify 99, etc.

About the [?] in the body of your text: I assume it was generated with a command such as \cite{key01}, or something similar. My advice would be to make sure to run LaTeX twice on the document each time you change (or add and/or delete) any citations.