Kerning And Hyphenation Issues With Latex Bibtex Titles

Importance of Correct Hyphenation

Proper hyphenation of titles in LaTeX documents is crucial for maintaining high typographic quality and readability. Incorrectly hyphenated titles with poor break points or overflowing into margins degrade the reading experience and overall aesthetic of documents.

This issue is particularly relevant for LaTeX users leveraging the BibTeX system for bibliography management. Lengthy titles taken from BibTeX bibliographic entries can present challenges for LaTeX's automated hyphenation functionality.

Configuring hyphenation rules and manually inserting discretionary hyphens where needed allows users to optimize line breaks and prevent titular overflow or underflow. Achieving excellence in hyphenation furthers LaTeX's capability to produce beautiful documents on par with the highest quality of typesetting.

Table of Contents

How LaTeX Handles Hyphenation

LaTeX incorporates TeX's hyphenation algorithm based on dictionary lookup of valid syllable break points. The algorithm aims to prevent poor line breaks by minimizing hyphen use except where typographically advantageous.

The algorithm assigns numeric penalties for possible break points based on rules and exceptions defined in hyphenation pattern files. Latex selects break points with the lowest penalties when line-breaking to optimize hyphenation aesthetically and semantically.

LaTeX users can load language-specific hyphenation patterns like \usepackage[english]{babel} to improve hyphenation for a document's vocabulary. However patterns rarely cover all words, so manual intervention is sometimes required.

Special Considerations for BibTeX Titles

BibTeX titles imported into LaTeX documents pose unique hyphenation challenges. Their wide vocabulary and proper nouns are prone to missing from standard hyphenation lexicon. Long titles may also exceed space between hyphenation points.

BibTeX only hyphenates title fields at explicit hyphen characters, relying fully on the LaTeX typesetting system for further hyphenation. Thus titles can overflow document margins without manual hyphen insertions when patterns fail.

Compound words, technical jargon, anglicized foreign words, named entities like company or product names resist effective automated hyphenation - requiring custom hyphens for optimal breaking.

Configuring hyphenat Package Options

The hyphenat LaTeX package provides extensive configuration for hyphenation behavior to overcome limitations of the TeX algorithm. Useful options when dealing with complex BibTeX-sourced titles include:

wordhyphenmin - Minimum word length to hyphenate.
lefthyphenmin/righthyphenmin - Minimum characters before/after hyphen.
hyphenpenalty - Penalty for line breaks with hyphens.
exhyphenpenalty - Penalty for line breaks post explicit hyphens.

Reducing wordhyphenmin ensures longer words are considered for hyphenation while lefthyphenmin/righthyphenmin prevent poor edge-of-line breaks.

Assigning exhyphenpenalty lower than hyphenpenalty incentivizes LaTeX to break at explicit hyphen characters instead of algorithmically-inserted hyphens.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Incorrect Break Points

The TeX hyphenation algorithm sometimes selects suboptimal or outright illegible break points when dealing with unfamiliar vocabulary.

For example, words with uncommon prefixes/suffixes may break awkwardly and lose meaning. Non-English words without orthographic cues for syllabic breaks also cause bad breakage.

Inserting manual discretionary hyphen characters overrides the algorithm's break point selection. Take care when adding discretionary hyphens to balance readability against aesthetic considerations.

Missing Hyphens

Lengthy single words or compound constructions can overflow margins without enough hyphenation points to break logically. This becomes more prominent with titles extracted from BibTeX having highly specific terminology.

When multiline overflow occurs, carefully examine break point opportunities earlier in the title. Insert discretionary hyphens such as data\-driven to guide LaTeX in applying additional breaks for fitting text to lines.

Overflowing Titles

BibTeX sourced titles containing multiple complex noun phrases may still overflow margins after maxing out hyphenation. The line breaking algorithm has finite linguistics for recursive segmentation of dense titles.

In these scenarios rewrite the title language for greater brevity and simplify compound constructions. As last resort, allow overflow while minimizing misshaped whitespace in adjacent lines through careful hyphen insertion.

Example LaTeX Codes

Basic bibliography


\begin{filecontents}{references.bib}
@article{example2020,
  title = {Data-driven machine learning techniques for high-energy particle detection in multinational collabora-tive networks},
  author = {First Last and Second Last},
  journal = {Journal of Applied Physics},
  year = {2020}
}
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{hyphenat}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}

We analyze data-driven algorithms for particle detection (\cite{example2020}).

\bibliographystyle{ieeetr}
\bibliography{references.bib}

\end{document}

This minimal example loads the hyphenat package with default settings and English language hyphenation rules. The BibTeX entry's lengthy title may produce suboptimal break points or overflow based on theme, font, or paragraph width.

Customizing hyphenat


\usepackage[english]{babel} 
\usepackage[none]{hyphenat}
\hyphenation{data-driv-en ma-chine-learn-ing high-en-er-gy col-la-bo-ra-tive}  

\begin{document}

\nohyphens{We analyze data-driven algorithms for particle detection...}

\end{document}

Here hyphenat is configured to disable automatic hyphenation rules with none option while providing custom hyphenation exceptions. The nohyphens command also locally prevents unwanted hyphens in body text.

Achieving Optimal Kerning

Kerning refers to typographic adjustment of horizontal spacing between specific letter pairs. Optimal kerning ensures uniform inter-character spacing to aid readability and aesthetic flow.

LaTeX automatically kern pairs using font metadata. But kerning exceptions are often needed when dealing with uncommon foreign words, slang, archaisms, or novel combinations in BibTeX titles.

Applying the \textbackslash kern command manually defines inter-character spacing overrides to improve awkward alignments. Granular adjustment prevents letters colliding or ugly gaps tearing lines.

Kerning pairs like Ta, AY, Wy require special attention as their shapes invite poor default spacing. Generous but subtle kerning between problematic pairs enhances uniformity of title formatting.

Enable per-font kerning via fontspec packages for .otf and .ttf fonts. Low-level tuning of kerning tables based on minor glyph collisions noticeably polished complex titles extracted from BibTeX in LaTeX.

Further Resources on Fine-Tuning LaTeX Documents

Effective treatment of LaTeX hyphenation and kerning issues around BibTeX titles requires deeper reference materials for context and guidance.

The LaTeX WikiBook provides introductory explanations of core algorithms and commands for managing hyphenation. Package documentation like hyphenat also offers specifics for customization options.

Advanced LaTeX users can consult Donald Knuth's definitive Typesetting Series detailing TeX's line-breaking and justification mechanisms as well as LaTeX internals.

Finally, Leslie Lamport's original LaTeX User Guide continues to offer insights into formatting and design considerations for high-quality typesetting unresolved in today's domain-specific LaTeX distributions.