Citations and bibliography

Citing your sources

• Academic writing must say where facts came from. LaTeX makes this tidy.
• You keep a list of sources, each with a key, and cite the key in your text.

The bibliography

• List your sources in a thebibliography environment, each as a \bibitem:

\begin{thebibliography}{9}
  \bibitem{lamport} Leslie Lamport. \emph{LaTeX}. 1986.
\end{thebibliography}

• The {9} just says "numbers are one digit wide". lamport is the key you choose.

Citing in the text

• Anywhere in the document, write \cite{lamport}:

LaTeX is powerful~\cite{lamport}.

• With this manual thebibliography, numbers follow the order of the \bibitem entries, not the order in which you first cite them. A single first entry is [1]; inserting an entry before another changes the later entry’s number.

Common mistakes

• A key that does not match a \bibitem. \cite{knut} with \bibitem{knuth} prints [?], and the log says LaTeX Warning: Citation 'knut' on page 1 undefined. The PDF still builds, so look for [?].
• One compile only. Citations, like \ref, need a second run to show their numbers.
• Putting the bibliography in the preamble. thebibliography is part of the document: place it before \end{document}.