UK TeX FAQ -- question label citesort

### Sorting and compressing citations

If you give LaTeX `\``cite{fred,joe,harry,min}`, its default commands could give something like “[2,6,4,3]”; this looks awful. One can of course get the things in order by rearranging the keys in the `\``cite` command, but who wants to do that sort of thing for no more improvement than “[2,3,4,6]”?

The cite package sorts the numbers and detects consecutive sequences, so creating “[2–4,6]”. The natbib package, with the `numbers` and `sort&compress` options, will do the same when working with its own numeric bibliography styles (plainnat.bst and unsrtnat.bst).

The package biblatex has a built-in style numeric-comp for its bibliographies.

`biblatex.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/biblatex (or browse the directory); catalogue entry
`cite.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/cite (or browse the directory); catalogue entry
`hypernat.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/hypernat (or browse the directory); catalogue entry
`hyperref.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/hyperref (or browse the directory); catalogue entry
`plainnat.bst`
  Distributed with macros/latex/contrib/natbib (or browse the directory); catalogue entry
`unsrtnat.bst`
  Distributed with macros/latex/contrib/natbib (or browse the directory); catalogue entry

This answer last edited: 2012-02-10

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