thebibliography (LaTeX2e unofficial reference manual (November 2018))

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### 8.24 `thebibliography`

Synopsis:

    \begin{thebibliography}{widest-label}
      \bibitem[label]{cite_key}
      ...
    \end{thebibliography}

Produce a bibliography or reference list. There are two ways to produce bibliographic lists. This environment is suitable when you have only a few references and can maintain the list by hand. See Using BibTeX for a more sophisticated approach.

This shows the environment with two entries.

    This work is based on \cite{latexdps}.
    Together they are \cite{latexdps, texbook}.
      ...
    \begin{thebibliography}{9}
    \bibitem{latexdps}
      Leslie Lamport.
      \textit{\LaTeX{}: a document preparation system}.
      Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1993.
    \bibitem{texbook}
      Donald Ervin Knuth.
      \textit{The \TeX book}.
      Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1983.
    \end{thebibliography}

This styles the first reference as ‘`[1] Leslie ...`’, and so that `\cite{latexdps}` produces the matching ‘`... based on [1]`’. The second `\cite` produces ‘`[1, 2]`’. You must compile the document twice to resolve these references.

The mandatory argument widest-label is text that, when typeset, is as wide as the widest item label produced by the `\bibitem` commands. The tradition is to use `9` for bibliographies with less than 10 references, `99` for ones with less than 100, etc.

The bibliographic list is headed by a title such as ‘`Bibliography`’. To change it there are two cases. In the `book` and `report` classes, where the top level sectioning is `\chapter` and the default title is ‘`Bibliography`’, that title is in the macro `\bibname`. For `article`, where the class’s top level sectioning is `\section` and the default is ‘`References`’, the title is in macro `\refname`. Change it by redefining the command, as with `\renewcommand{\refname}{Cited references}` after `\begin{document}`.

Language support packages such as `babel` will automatically redefine `\refname` or `\bibname` to fit the selected language.

Unofficial LaTeX2e reference manual