Short form citations with Chicago author-title

Question

I am 'transitioning' from Word/Endnote to LaTeX (via Texshop)/Bibdesk - for book writing. I use the Chicago's footnote style (author-title). I want the first citation to be full, including the full title, and subsequent citations to show only a short form of the title. For example:

First citation:

C. Andrew, The Defence of the Realm - The Authorized History of MI5 (London: Penguin, 2012).

Second citation:

Andrew, The Defence of the Realm.

(At the moment, my second citation is: "Andrew, The Defence of the Realm - The Authorized History of MI5")

Here is my code:

%REFERENCES   
\usepackage[notes,backend=bibtex,hyperref=false,longcrossref=false,booklongxref=false]{biblatex-chicago}
\usepackage[hyperfootnotes=false]{hyperref}

I use BibTeX as my Engine in TeXshop, and XeLaTex to compile. In Bibdesk I have added the field Short, to give me a short title. I have spent hours online, including on this site (which has been an absolute godsend!), trying to figure it out, to no avail.

Many thanks for your help... I am sorry if there is an obvious answer which I have missed. Please forgive a newbie...:-)

Answer 1

In this case it makes sense to split the title into title and subtitle.

\documentclass[british]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}

\usepackage[notes,backend=bibtex,longcrossref=false,booklongxref=false]{biblatex-chicago}

\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{andrew,
  author    = {Christopher Andrew},
  title     = {The Defence of the Realm},
  subtitle  = {The Authorized History of MI5},
  date      = {2012},
  location  = {London},
  publisher = {Penguin},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
Lorem\autocite{andrew} ipsum\autocite{sigfridsson} dolor\autocite{andrew}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

(I can't upload pictures at the moment, so I can only offer a copy-paste of the PDF).

Footnote 1 reads

Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (London: Penguin, 2012).

and footnote 3

Andrew, The Defence of the Realm.

---

Alternatively you could use title and shorttitle

@book{andrew,
  author     = {Christopher Andrew},
  title      = {The Defence of the Realm -- The Authorized History of MI5},
  shorttitle = {The Defence of the Realm},
  date       = {2012},
  location   = {London},
  publisher  = {Penguin},
}

But that duplicates information and does not allow for a universally enforced separator between title and subtitle.

There is no field short so simply using that won't work.

---

Note that you may want to switch from BibTeX to Biber, see Biblatex with Biber: Configuring my editor to avoid undefined citations. Only Biber lets you use all of biblatex's features, with BibTeX you are stuck with a reduced set of features.