BibTeX bibliography in LaTeX

The .bib file

References live in a separate text database with the .bib extension. One entry per source, each with a key you will cite by:

@book{knuth1984, author = {Donald E. Knuth}, title = {The TeXbook}, year = {1984} }

Citing in text

Cite with \cite{knuth1984} and pick a style with \bibliographystyle{plain}, then print the list with \bibliography{mybase} where the document ends. Only cited entries appear — the .bib file can hold hundreds you never use.

Build order

One pdflatex run is not enough: references resolve across passes. The classic order is pdflatex, bibtex, pdflatex, pdflatex. If question marks survive, you skipped a pass — run the chain again before suspecting the .bib file.

Styles change everything

The same .bib database renders as [1], (Knuth, 1984) or footnotes depending on the style: plain numbers, author-year, alphabetic labels. Switch styles with one line, never by editing entries — content and presentation stay separated exactly like LaTeX itself promises.

Managers, not Notepad

Past fifty entries, maintain the .bib with JabRef or Zotero export, not by hand: duplicate keys and broken braces are the top two «mysterious» BibTeX failures. Keep one canonical file under version control and generate per-paper subsets from it, not the reverse.