Citation with some text inside square brackets

Question

I'd like to add a citation which looks like this:

[_Text_ Citation_01, pages]

For example:

[See: 155, pp.89--99]

How can I do this using standard \cite{} command (without natbib or anything else)?

P.S. The text might be in Cyrillic!

Answer 1

A recommendable choice would be to use natbib or better yet biblatex. Let's see with natbib:

\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@book{01,
 author={Caesar, Gaius Iulius},
 title={Commentarii de bello {Gallico}},
 year={703},
}
\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[numbers,square]{natbib}

\begin{document}

Here's a citation \cite[See:][p.~2]{01}

Another: \cite[p.~3]{01}.

Another: \cite{01}.

\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\bibliography{\jobname}

\end{document}

The \cite command has now two optional argument. When only one is present, it's the "post-citation"; if two are present, the first is the "pre-citation" and the second one the post-citation.

Without extra packages you can still emulate this behavior:

\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@book{01,
 author={Caesar, Gaius Iulius},
 title={Commentarii de bello {Gallico}},
 year={703},
}
\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass{article}

\makeatletter
\let\cite\relax
\DeclareRobustCommand{\cite}{%
  \let\new@cite@pre\@gobble
  \@ifnextchar[\new@cite{\@citex[]}}
\def\new@cite[#1]{\@ifnextchar[{\new@citea{#1}}{\@citex[#1]}}
\def\new@citea#1{\def\new@cite@pre{#1}\@citex}
\def\@cite#1#2{[{\new@cite@pre\space#1\if\relax\detokenize{#2}\relax\else, #2\fi}]}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

Here's a citation \cite[See:][p.~2]{01}

Another: \cite[p.~3]{01}.

Another: \cite{01}.

Again: \cite[See:][]{01}

\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{\jobname}

\end{document}

In case you want only the "pre-citation", use

\cite[See:][]{01}

with an empty second optional argument.

Answer 2

I'm sometimes required to use amsrefs and have been looking for something analogous to natbib's built-in \cite[pre][post]{label} for a while. Since I haven't seen it online or in the package documentation (as of 2018), I'm posting the solution here.

It turns out you can just write pre-citation and/or post-citation text inside a \citelist command, i.e., \citelist{cf. \cite{morgan-tian}} prints out: [cf. MT].

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[shortalphabetic]{amsrefs}

\begin{document}
Theorem 1 follows from 
Lemma 2 \cite{morgan-tian}*{1.1} and 
Proposition 3 \citelist{cf. \cite{morgan-tian}*{1.2}}.

\begin{bibdiv}
\begin{biblist}
\bib{morgan-tian}{book}{
  author={Morgan, John},
  author={Tian, Gang},
  title={Ricci flow and the Poincar\'e conjecture},
  series={Clay Mathematics Monographs},
  volume={3},
  publisher={American Mathematical Society},
  place={Providence, RI},
  date={2007},
}
\end{biblist}
\end{bibdiv}

\end{document}

Answer 3

What do you think about a new command \Cite

\newcommand{\Cite}[2]{[See~\cite{#1},~#2]}

Answer 4

As noted by others, natbib or biblatex are the way to go. But if you have restrictions like me, you could try this option, which I think is a little easier to understand than the other answers here.

I couldn't get the usual precitation \cite[See: ][]{Citation_01} to work for my case, which is an IEEE computer society (compsoc) conference paper - although it has worked for me in the past with other formats. The prescribed preamble includes: \usepackage[nocompress]{cite}.

I ended up going with this hack:

\renewcommand\citeleft{[See:~}
...as proven in~\cite{Citation_01}. 
\renewcommand\citeleft{[}

Answer 5

Although it has been a while I would like to suggest a solution which I used for my \cite problem. In our documentation we should cite our reference documents as [RD-n] and for applicable documents [AD-n]. So here is my solution for that:

\DeclareFieldFormat{labelnumber}{\ifkeyword{RD}{RD-#1}{AD-#1}}

My example .bib file for RDs:

@article{einstein,
    author =       "Albert Einstein",
    title =        "{Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter K{\"o}rper}. ({German})
    [{On} the electrodynamics of moving bodies]",
    journal =      "Annalen der Physik",
    volume =       "322",
    number =       "10",
    pages =        "891--921",
    year =         "1905",
    DOI =          "http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/andp.19053221004",
    keywords =     "RD"
}
@book{dirac,
    title={The Principles of Quantum Mechanics},
    author={Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac},
    isbn={9780198520115},
    series={International series of monographs on physics},
    year={1981},
    publisher={Clarendon Press},
    keywords = {RD}
}
@online{knuthwebsite,
    author    = "Donald Knuth",
    title     = "Knuth: Computers and Typesetting",
    url       = "http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/abcde.html",
    keywords  = "RD"
}
@inbook{knuth-fa,
    author = "Donald E. Knuth",
    title = "Fundamental Algorithms",
    publisher = "Addison-Wesley",
    year = "1973",
    chapter = "1.2",
    keywords  = "RD"
}

Above solution provides me to identify if the keyword in .bib declared as "RD" then \cite{dirac} or \cite{<your_cite>} command prints out [RD-1] or [RD-n].

It is processing for ADs same as RDs.

Example .bib for ADs:

@book{onur,
    title={The Principles of Quantum Mechanics},
    author={Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac},
    isbn={9780198520115},
    series={International series of monographs on physics},
    year={1981},
    publisher={Clarendon Press},
    keywords = {AD}
}
@book{sergio,
    title={The Principles of Quantum Mechanics},
    author={Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac},
    isbn={9780198520115},
    series={International series of monographs on physics},
    year={1981},
    publisher={Clarendon Press},
    keywords = {AD}
}
@book{ivan,
    title={The Principles of Quantum Mechanics},
    author={Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac},
    isbn={9780198520115},
    series={International series of monographs on physics},
    year={1981},
    publisher={Clarendon Press},
    keywords = {AD}
}

Same as RDs we should only type \cite{<your_cite>}. Since our (company) applicable documents are not cite-able we are using \nocite*{<AD document keyword>} at the preamble of the document. Such as just after the \begin{document} command.

I hope this helps for anyone!