LaTeX seems to be a complete mess when it comes to citations for web pages. There are several ways to do it, and then there are strange unexpected side effects of various differences. In all cases below I am using the following bibliography style:
\bibliographystyle{plainnat.bst}
ONLINE
@online{culture2021Dom,
title = {Kölner Dom – Cologne Cathedral},
year = {2021},
url = {https://germanculture.com.ua/travel-to-germany/kolner-dom-cologne-cathedral/},
urldate= {date accessed in 2021-March-03},
note = {German Culture}
}
When I use this with MLA style references, the symbol that appears in the text looks like:
cul(2021)
But what appears in the bibliography section is:
Kölner dom – cologne cathedral, 2021. URL https://germanculture.com.ua/
travel-to-germany/kolner-dom-cologne-cathedral/. German Culture.
The is absolutely no way that the reader is going to know that "cul(2021)" is a citation of something that starts with "Kölner dom" Doesn't this seem to be entirely broken? The citation fails to tell you which of the references you are referring to.
ONLINE with AUTHOR
The citation entry is normally taken from the author's last name, but we don't have an author. What if we put one in?
@online{culture2021Dom,
author = {German-Culture-Website}
title = {Kölner Dom – Cologne Cathedral},
year = {2021},
url = {https://germanculture.com.ua/travel-to-germany/kolner-dom-cologne-cathedral/},
urldate= {date accessed in 2021-March-03},
note = {German Culture}
}
Now, I get this following at the symbol:
German-Culture-Website
and in the bibliography:
German‑Culture‑Website.
That is it. No url, no note, no date, no nothing, just the name. Seriously, this is terribly broken.
ONLINE AUTHOR multiple names
Now lets try somthing like:
@online{culture2021Dom,
author = {German Culture Website}
title = {Kölner Dom – Cologne Cathedral},
year = {2021},
url = {https://germanculture.com.ua/travel-to-germany/kolner-dom-cologne-cathedral/},
urldate= {date accessed in 2021-March-03},
note = {German Culture}
}
And now, in the citation spot I get the following symbol:
Website
(no date in parens) and the bibliography is:
German Culture Website.
No date, no URL, no description, this is useless.
MISC
An online site for getting bibtex entries recommended the following style:
@misc{culture2021Dom,
title={Kölner Dom – Cologne Cathedral},
url={https://germanculture.com.ua/travel-to-germany/kolner-dom-cologne-cathedral/},
journal={German Culture}
}
This produced the following citation in mla style
cul
This looks in the book like an accident, and not a citation of a resource, and in the bibliography I get:
Kölner Dom – Cologne Cathedral. URL https://germanculture.com.ua/travel-to-germany/
kolner-dom-cologne-cathedral/.
Once again, there is no way for the user to know that "cul" is a reference to this entry! Here I am having to reverse engineer a perverse reference citation system when I could just TYPE the entry in myself and save hours of work.
WHAT I WANT
I want the citation to have a year in it, so that it looks like a citation, something like for the symbol:
German Culture(2021)
And then, in the bibliography, I would like something like:
German Culture Website, 2021, Kölner dom – cologne cathedral, URL
https://germanculture.com.ua/
travel-to-germany/kolner-dom-cologne-cathedral/
Or, I would be happy with for the symbol:
Kölner(2021)
and the bibliography entry to be:
Kölner dom – cologne cathedral, 2021. URL https://germanculture.com.ua/
travel-to-germany/kolner-dom-cologne-cathedral/. German Culture.
Simple question: What do I put in this bibTeX entry in order to get a reasonable citation and a reasonable bibliography entry that match each other?
Is there any way to FORCE the citation symbol?
biblatex
?natbib
compatible bibliography styles were designed before there were as many purely online resources. But the output you're getting makes perfect sense given the way you have created your.bib
entry. As @Bernard suggests, using a more modern bibliography package likebiblatex
would probably be the best bet..bib
file, and created citation callouts that match the bibliography style you chose. They don't make sense to you only because you expected something else, but they are completely expected given the input/style you used. :)