bringing cite (package cite) without line breaks to work

Question

I will ask a new question:

I created a working example:

\documentclass[a4paper,oneside,12pt]{book}    

\usepackage[nobreak]{cite}                   
\usepackage{hyperref} 

\begin{document}

\section{lorem}
lorem lorem lorem lorem lorem lorem lorem lorem lorem lorem lorem\cite{loremlorem}, lorem lorem lorem.

\bibliographystyle{apalike}
\bibliography{literatur}

\end{document}

This gives

Even without hyperref, it does not work. The bib file contains:

@MISC{loremlorem,
  title={lorem lorem lorem lorem},
  author={lorem lorem, lorem lorem},
  year={2222},
  publisher={lorem lorem lorem lorem}
}

I would expect, what is written in the documentary under Line breaks:

http://texdoc.net/texmf-dist/doc/latex/cite/cite.pdf

It clearly does a line break in the citation.

Solution: Apalike not supported, but still no warning or error as output.

Answer 1

I believe you have completely misunderstood the meaning and purpose of the nobreak option of the cite citation management package.

The cite package is meant to be used with bibliography styles that generate numeric-style citation call-outs, e.g., [3] and [22]. If the nobreak option is set, there won't be a line break either before or after the citation call-out.

However, you would appear to be using the apalike bibliography style, which can generate only authoryear-style citation call-outs. All bets are off as to what will happen if you use it in conjunction with the cite package. For sure, there's no reason to believe that the nobreak option will perform as (mis-guidedly) expected. The title of the package's user guide reads "The cite package: well formed numeric citations". And on page 3 of the same user guide, one finds "If your citations are not numeric, and not of any near-numeric sortable form, then you should probably not use cite.sty".

The remedy? Either switch to a bibliography style that can create numeric-style citation call-outs, or stop using the cite package and, in its place, start using a citation management package such as natbib.