Small non-breaking space in \parencites with pages mentioned

Question

Writing a paper in french, I have a problem with \parencites: the separation between two items is a semicolon (which is great) but it's stuck directly after the first item. I need to add a thin non-breaking space precisely (\,) and here's what I tried:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage{polyglossia}
\setmainlanguage[variant=swiss]{french}

\usepackage[backend=biber, style=apa]{biblatex}

\DeclareMultiCiteCommand{\parencites}[\mkbibparens]%
 {\parencite}{\,}

\nocite{*}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{HoffnerMelchert,
  title = {A {{Grammar}} of the {{Hittite Language}}. \emph{Vol. 1 :}{{Reference Grammar}}},
  shorttitle = {A {{Grammar}} of the {{Hittite Language}}},
  author = {Hoffner, Jr., A Harry and Melchert, Craig},
  date = {2008},
  publisher = {Eisenbrauns},
  langid = {english},
}

@article{KloekhorstMorphology,
  title = {Pronominal Morphology in the Anatolian Language Family},
  author = {Kloekhorst, Alwin},
  date = {2012},
  journaltitle = {Altorientalische Forschungen},
  volume = {39},
  number = {2},
  pages = {254--264},
}

\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}

Je cite d'abord \parencites{HoffnerMelchert}{KloekhorstMorphology}. Puis je cite \parencites[10-12]{HoffnerMelchert}[12-14]{KloekhorstMorphology}.

\end{document}

The problem is that the first in-text citation is correctly displayed :

(Hoffner & Melchert, 2008 ; Kloekhorst, 2012)

but the second as :

(Hoffner & Melchert, 2008, pp. 10-12 Kloekhorst, 2012, pp. 12-14)

I think I don't add a non-breaking space correctly, but how to ? Thanks in advance !

Answer 1

By default biblatex will insert a thin space before a semicolon if the French language module is active.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage{polyglossia}
\setmainlanguage[variant=swiss]{french}

\usepackage[backend=biber, style=apa]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
Je cite d'abord \parencites{sigfridsson}{worman}.
Puis je cite \parencites[380-381]{sigfridsson}[12-14]{worman}.
\end{document}

Compare this with the output you get when you use German, for example

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage{polyglossia}
\setmainlanguage[variant=swiss]{german}

\usepackage[backend=biber, style=apa]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
Je cite d'abord \parencites{sigfridsson}{worman}.
Puis je cite \parencites[380-381]{sigfridsson}[12-14]{worman}.
\end{document}

So you shouldn't have to change anything and can just remove the \DeclareMultiCiteCommand from your document.