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<head>
<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label capbibtex</title>
</head><body>
<h3>Capitalisation in BibTeX</h3>
<p/>The standard BibTeX bibliography styles impose fixed ideas about
the capitalisation of titles of things in the bibliography.  While
this is not unreasonable by BibTeX&#8217;s lights (the rules come from
the <em>Chicago Manual of Style</em>) it can be troublesome, since
BibTeX fails to recognise special uses (such as acronyms, chemical
formulae, etc.).
<p/>The solution is to enclose the letter or letters, whose capitalisation
BibTeX should not touch, in braces, as:
<blockquote>
<pre>
title = {The {THE} operating system},
</pre>
</blockquote><p>
Sometimes you find BibTeX changing the case of a single letter
inappropriately.  No matter: the technique can be applied to single
letters, as in:
<blockquote>
<pre>
title = {Te{X}niques and tips},
</pre>
</blockquote><p>
If your document design specification requires a different style of
capitalisation, you should acquire a bibliography style that doesn&#8217;t
enforce BibTeX&#8217;s default rules.  It is definitely <em>not</em> a good
idea to enclose an entire title in braces, as in
<blockquote>
<pre>
title = {{TeXniques and tips}},
</pre>
</blockquote><p>
though that does ensure that the capitalisation is not changed.  Your
BibTeX database should be a general-purpose thing, not something
tuned to the requirements of a particular document or bibliography
style, or to the way you are thinking today &#8212; for example, on a
future occasion, you might find yourself using a different BibTeX
style with different capitalisation rules.
<p/>There&#8217;s more on the subject in the

<a href="FAQ-BibTeXing.html">BibTeX documentation</a>.
<p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=capbibtex">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=capbibtex</a>
</body>