<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">I think the reason is that you have written ”Acta Mathematica” with opening and closing quotation marks. It should be simply <span style="font-family: Menlo; font-size: 12px;" class="">"Acta Mathematica"</span><font face="Courier" class="">. </font> Maybe your editor converts the quotation marks automatically to opening and closing, which are different.<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Manfred<br class=""><div class=""> <br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 09 Jul 2021, at 19:54, Nitecki, Zbigniew H. <<a href="mailto:Zbigniew.Nitecki@tufts.edu" class="">Zbigniew.Nitecki@tufts.edu</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class="">
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I’m confused by the following phenomenon:
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<div class="">Following the LaTex Companion, \S 13.2.3 (pp 769ff), I tried to make my references to standard journals uniform by putting, at the beginning of my .bib file, a set of abbreviations in the following format (eg):</div>
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@string{Acta<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>=``Acta Mathematica''}</div>
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and then use the abbreviation in the following way (eg):</div>
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@article{Poincare:residues,</div>
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author={Henri Poincar\'e},</div>
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title={\foreignlanguage{french}{Sur les residusdes int\'egrales doubles}},</div>
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journal=Acta, </div>
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volume={9}, </div>
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year={1886/7}, </div>
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pages={321-380}</div>
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}</div>
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<div class="">I get an error messages in my console:</div>
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<div class="">This is BibTeX, Version 0.99d (TeX Live 2017)</div>
<div class="">The top-level auxiliary file: Coeur.aux</div>
<div class="">The style file: plain.bst</div>
<div class="">Database file #1: calculus.bib</div>
<div class="">Warning--string name "``acta" is undefined</div>
<div class="">--line 2 of file calculus.bib</div>
<div class="">Missing "}" in string command---line 2 of file calculus.bib</div>
<div class=""> : @string{acta =``acta </div>
<div class=""> : Mathematica''}</div>
<div class="">I'm skipping whatever remains of this command</div>
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<div class="">and it seems to quit after a lot of these kinds of errors.</div>
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<div class="">What am I doing wrong? Has the format changed since the Latex Companion was written?</div>
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<div class=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; border-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; border-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">
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<font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; " class="">Zbigniew Nitecki</font></div>
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<font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; " class="">Department of Mathematics</font></div>
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<font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; " class="">Tufts University</font></div>
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<font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; " class="">Medford, MA 02155</font></div>
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<font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; " class="">telephones:</font></div>
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<font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; " class="">Office<span class="Apple-converted-tab"> </span>(617)627-3843</font></div>
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<font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; " class="">Dept.<span class="Apple-converted-tab"> </span>(617)627-3234</font></div>
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<font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; " class="">Dept. fax<span class="Apple-converted-tab"> </span>(617)627-3966</font></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><a href="http://www.tufts.edu/~znitecki/" class="">http://www.tufts.edu/~znitecki/</a></span></div>
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