author separator with biblatex [apa style]

Question

I'd like to change the author separator from the current ampersand & to and. I've apparently been able to get some control over the separator in the citation, but so far haven't found the trick to control it in the bibliography.

Here is essentially the same question, but the answers are now apparently obsolete, after a thorough rewrite of biblatex https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/200467/

I have found two ways to change the separator in the citation, with \finalnamedelim and with \DefineBibliographyStrings. How can I control the separator in the bibliography?

Here is my commented MWE:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[backend=biber,hyperref,style=apa,citestyle=authoryear,maxcitenames=6]{biblatex}
\begin{filecontents}{mybib.bib}
@book{ref,
    author = {Michel Goossens and Frank Mittelbach and Alexander Samarin},
    title = {The LaTeX Companion},
    year = {1993},
    publisher = {Addison-Wesley},
    address = {Reading, Massachusetts}
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{mybib.bib}

\AtBeginDocument{%
    \renewcommand*{\finalandcomma}{}
    \renewcommand*{\finalnamedelim}{\space and\space}
}

% With \parencite and \textcite, the ampersand can be removed by adding the biblatex option citestyle=authoryear. But it can also be set here, except that \finalnamedelim overrules:
\DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{%
  and = {y}%
}


\begin{document}
\begin{itemize}
\item[] A cite: \cite{ref}. 
\item[] A parencite: \parencite{ref}.
\item[] A textcite: \textcite{ref}.
\end{itemize}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Do you want to use citestyle=apa as well or do you have a good reason for style=apa,citestyle=authoryear? — moewe, Jul 05 '18 at 21:27
Thanks for your interest moewe. I'd like the citations to look like this: Goosens, Mittelbach, and Samarin (1993). I have used style=apa and citestyle=apa for reasons I forget. If there's a better way, I'm happy to learn. — PatrickT, Jul 05 '18 at 21:31
I have answered assuming that you want APA style (with your desired modifications of course) also in citations. Note that for most intents and purposes the biblatex option hyperref=true (hyperref without a value is equivalent to hyperref=true) is not better than the default hyperref=auto. Both will enable links if and only if the hyperref package is loaded. The only difference between the two is that hyperref=true warns you if you failed to load the hyperref package. — moewe, Jul 05 '18 at 21:48

moewe · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-06T22:08:31.270

If you just want to replace the ampersands of the APA style with 'and', you can use

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[backend=biber,style=apa]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\DeclareDelimFormat*{finalnamedelim}
  {\ifnum\value{liststop}>2 \finalandcomma\fi\addspace\bibstring{and}\space}

% the bibliography also needs another conditional, so we can't wrap
% everything up with just the two lines above
\DeclareDelimFormat[bib,biblist]{finalnamedelim}{%
  \ifthenelse{\value{listcount}>\maxprtauth}
    {}
    {\ifthenelse{\value{liststop}>2}
       {\finalandcomma\addspace\bibstring{and}\space}
       {\addspace\bibstring{and}\space}}}

% this is a special delimiter to solve the bugs reported in
% https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/417648/35864
\DeclareDelimFormat*{finalnamedelim:apa:family-given}{%
  \ifthenelse{\value{listcount}>\maxprtauth}
    {}
    {\finalandcomma\addspace\bibstring{and}\space}}

\begin{document}
% \citereset is only used to obtain a citation with all names every time
\begin{itemize}
\item \citereset A cite: \cite{companion,sigfridsson}. 
\item \citereset A parencite: \parencite{companion,sigfridsson}.
\item \citereset A textcite: \textcite{companion,sigfridsson}.
\end{itemize}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Note that this is specific to biblatex-apa and that with most other biblatex styles (certainly the standard styles) a simple

\DeclareDelimFormat{finalnamedelim}{<your definition here>}

should be enough.

Thanks a lot for your help moewe! I didn't realize that the biblatex-apa style was somewhat harder to handle. The result here is excellent. Thumbs up. — PatrickT, Jul 06 '18 at 08:20
Would you comment on \citereset? First time I see it. I'll google for it, but it might be useful to add a comment here about what it does and whether it is compulsory. — PatrickT, Jul 06 '18 at 08:22
@PatrickT That is only for the example. For works with 3 to 6 authors (or thereabouts) the APA wants you to mention all authors on the first citation and only First et al. on subsequent citations. So to make sure that we always get all three names for companion the MWE resets the tracker before each citation. Remove it to see the difference. — moewe, Jul 06 '18 at 08:24
I see thanks. The manual says this "This command resets the citation style. This may be useful if the style replaces repeated citations with abbreviations like ibidem, idem, op. cit., etc. and you want to force a full citation at the beginning of a new chapter, section, or some other location." Together with your explanation I understand it! Thanks again! — PatrickT, Jul 06 '18 at 08:26

author separator with biblatex [apa style]

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