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<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label sortbib</title>
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<h3>Sorting lists of citations</h3>
<p/>BibTeX has a sorting function, and most BibTeX styles sort the
citation list they produce; most people find this desirable.
<p/>However, it is perfectly possible to write a
<code>thebibliography</code> environment that <em>looks</em> as if it
came from BibTeX, and many people do so (in order to save time in
the short term).
<p/>The problem arises when <code>thebibliography</code>-writers decide
their citations need to be sorted.  A common misapprehension is to
insert <code>\</code><code>bibliographystyle{alpha}</code> (or similar) and expect
the typeset output to be sorted in some magical way.  BibTeX
doesn&rsquo;t work that way! &mdash; if you write <code>thebibliography</code>,
you get to sort its contents.  BibTeX will only sort the contents
of a <code>thebibliography</code> environment when it creates it, to
be inserted from a <code>.bbl</code> file by a <code>\</code><code>bibliography</code> command.
<p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=sortbib">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=sortbib</a>
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