Re: compound surnames, Bibtex, ordering in References section

Martijn Meijers wrote:
The problem:

I have a set of references that contain authors with compound
surnames. Let's assume:

0. M. Meijers
1. J. van Oostrum
2. M. von Braunsteigen
3. B. Baan


I'd like to have a sorting as follows:

0. Baan, B.
1. von Braunsteigen, M.
2. Meijers, M.
3. van Oostrum, J.


My questions:

A. Is it possible to let BibteX perform the sorting on surname only as
proposed (thus Oostrum ending up in the reference list under O, and
Braunsteigen ending up under B)? Is there a standard .bst option for
that?

at the top of your .bib-file, put the following:

@PREAMBLE{"\providecommand{\noopsort}[1]{}"}

then, write the following in the author (editor) field:

author = {{\noopsort{oostrum}}van Oostrum, J.}

bibtex ignores command names but otherwise uses all text for sorting, so it'll
sort this author name under O. LaTeX, when processing the file, will process
\noopsort, replacing {oostrum} with the empty string, so that the author appears
as "van Oostrum".

the only thing this doesn't handle is the dutch convention of writing "Jan van
Oostrum" (with small v) but "Van Oostrum" or "Van Oostrum, Jan" (with capital
V). but AFAIK there's no way to get that right with bibtex.

B. What's the common way of sorting these type of compound surname
citations? If I'm correct, I think in Dutch I would do it as proposed
under A (so "von" part does not take part in sorting phase, only in
case of equal, then put later in list, but still under the first
letter of the 'real' surname), but how is this in the English
language?

I don't know, honestly. I've seen both. I've also seen citations in the text
being done without the "van" part altogether, so something like "As shown in
Oostrum (2005)..." when referencing someone named "Van Oostrum".


--
Joost Kremers joostkremers@xxxxxxxxx
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)
.