nptextcite with multiple sources needs a semicolon

[jjhaegele]

As far as I understand \nptextcites its only use is within parentheses as a substitute for \parencite.

So, I wondered why multiple citations are seperated by a comma with \nptextcites instead of a semicolon

A semicolon is used with \parencite and would be according to the apa manual, see https://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/references-in-parentheses.

Take the last example from the apa website: (Minor, 2001; see also Adams, 1999; Storandt, 2007). I would like to create this with (\nptextcite{minor2001}; see also \nptextcites{adams1999,storandt2007}) (or the like), but would get (Minor, 2001; see also Adams, 1999, Storandt, 2007) by now.

Any problems with changing the behaviour of \nptextcites to deviate from \textcite in this manner?

In any case, thanks for the great package!

_Edit: Used \nptextcites for multiple citations. Behavior remains the same.

[moewew]

\nptextcites is also a bit inconsistent in that regard. Like \textcite \nptextcite builds directly upon \usebibmacro{textcite} (it just sets a flag to drop parentheses), so \nptextcite produces commas (\compcitedelim), yet the multicite command is defined with \multicitedelim

https://github.com/plk/biblatex-apa/blob/ad7c5d025293fa2ae51cf1f7ae4037129a49d903/tex/latex/biblatex-apa/cbx/apa.cbx#L373

This leads to the apparent inconsistency shown in the MWE below.

@jjhaegele For the shown use case you don't need \nptextcites at all. \parencites is all you need. But of course the general point still stands.

\documentclass[british]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}

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

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
\parencites{sigfridsson}[see also][]{worman,geer}

\nptextcites{sigfridsson}{worman,geer}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

[moewew]

@plk What do you think about this? Fundamentally, should \nptextcites be based on \textcite or on \parencite?

\documentclass[british]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}

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

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
\nptextcite{sigfridsson}

\textcite{sigfridsson}

\parencite{sigfridsson}

\nptextcite{sigfridsson,nussbaum}

\textcite{sigfridsson,nussbaum}

\parencite{sigfridsson,nussbaum}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

See also the superfluous space in the \nptextcite that is probably caused by https://github.com/plk/biblatex-apa/issues/73 (I think the code suggested there should fix this).

[plk]

I'm open to suggestions - that macro was put in a long, long time ago and is clumsy, probably not having much justification at all any more. I was planning to revisit all of this when the APA publish the 7th edition this year when I'll have to update the whole package anyway.

[moewew]

I might be misunderstanding what \nptextcite was supposed to do, but I always saw it as a kind of \parencite but without the parentheses. Then building upon \parencite would seem more natural.

[plk]

Will be fixed in v9.1

[moewew]

The spurious space from #73 is indeed fixed, but with version 9.1 the following MWE produces

\documentclass[british]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}

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

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
\parencite{sigfridsson,worman,geer}

(\nptextcite{sigfridsson,worman,geer})

(\nptextcites{sigfridsson}[see also][380]{worman}[12]{geer})

\end{document}

(Geer, 1985; Sigfridsson & Ryde, 1998; Worman, 2002)

(Geer, 1985, Sigfridsson & Ryde, 1998, Worman, 2002)

(Sigfridsson & Ryde, 1998; see also, Worman, 2002, p. 380, Geer, 1985, p. 12)

that is to say \nptextcite uses commas as \multicitedelim and \parencite uses semicolons. But \nptextcite sometimes uses semicolons when there is a prenote for multiple citations.

I don't know what the APA manual has to say about that but at least the inconsistency in the last line look odd. (Though I could believe that the APA manual wants exactly that.)

[plk]

That looks wrong - as far as I know, there are no APA examples for such situations but it should like like textcites and so no semi-colons.

[moewew]

As a data point: apacite has a command \citeNP, which looks like it could be equivalent to biblatex-apa's \nptextcite. \citeNP is described as

\cite without the parentheses. This is useful for complex constructions like

\citeauthor{Jone01} (\citeyearNP{Jone01}; see also \citeNP{SmJo03})

And apacite's \cite is practically biblatex-apa's \parencite, so in apacite \nptextcite is based on \parencite, not on \textcite.